Of Curiosity and Cats
by Beth Nottingham
Summary: Near the END of R2, Lelouch meets an OC whose, ah, unusual personality gets his mind off of his fate. In order to keep her around, he does something very logical. That was... logical, right? rated 'T' for *brief* violence and *minor* suggestive themes.
1. Chapter 1

Forward:

Dear reader,

As I mentioned in the summary, this fic takes place near the end of R2, so if you haven't seen the end, GO WATCH IT, AND **THEN** READ THIS.

If you're like me and don't mind spoilers, go ahead and read it anyway.

You have been warned.

Beth Nottingham

Note: Since Pendragon was destroyed by the F.L.E.I.J.A., I figured that while it was being rebuilt he made each of the government bureaus in the old colonized nations into imperial cities. Thus, there's an imperial city in many different countries, and the one mentioned most often in the story is in Japan.

I'd like to thank my friend FMA Human Starter Kit for all of her input and constructive criticism, so _arigato gozaimasu, Starter Kit-san!_

I'll stop rambling now, except to say this: _Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!_ (Please look favorably on me!)

m(_._)m

^^ Bow ^^

**Prologue: What does it Look Like I'm doing?**

The first thing you need to know about me, if you're going to read this story with any degree of interest, is that I am in both senses of the word _curious_.

Curious is typically synonymous with "inquisitive," or "nosy," and I am proud to announce that if there's something even remotely interesting around, I will be the first one who's dying to know more about it. Curious can also mean "peculiar," or "bizarre," which I will admit to with equal if not greater pride than the first definition. My way of thinking about it can be expressed as "sane people never have any fun."

The second thing you'll need to know about me is that I am circumlocutory. Circumlocution is the use of many words when few would do; in essence, rambling. As a consequence of these two traits: wordiness and curiosity, I am something of a walking thesaurus, or just a walking arsenal of facts. I like that about myself; it's certainly a more fun identity than a senior in highschool who works at a five-hundred yen shop and doesn't like soft-serve ice cream.

I say senior because that is when my story begins, in the late spring of my senior year. The weather had done that irritating thing is always does around this time of year; the late frost had been broiled away by the sudden glare of the sun so that the temperature outside was in the nineties, and the humidity was five hundred percent or thereabouts. _Naturally_, the air conditioning unit I had paid so much to have installed in my tiny apartment was malfunctioning, and _naturally_ I would suffocate if I shut myself in the refrigerator, so I did the only thing I could think of to get cooled off.

My car hadn't had air conditioning since it was my father's years ago; I inherited it in full knowledge that it was a temporary measure for while I was living away from home and before I had enough saved up to buy my own vehicle. That was why, with the music turned up so loud that the beat seemed to miss my ears and course through my body and with all four windows cranked down as far as they would go, I tore along the highway at speeds I will not admit to in writing, enjoying the stiff wind my irresponsible conduct was creating.

I drove for over an hour, not really paying attention to where I was going. The cooling breeze was too delicious to slow down even enough to look for a street sign. It wasn't until I glanced at my fuel gauge and discovered that half a tank had shrunk to less than a quarter that I began to look for a good place to turn around. The road I was on cut through a rather boring grassy plane on one side, but on the other, there was a high white stone wall that stretched out ridiculously far before finally reaching its corner and vanishing from sight. There was a small unmarked door of the kind used primarily for service entrances set in it at one point, and as I pulled over to hunt for a local road map, my eyes lit upon the keypad for its lock.

I couldn't be quite sure if it was my imagination or not, but that code lock looked a rather lot like the kind my family markets. My father founded his own company, selling burglar alarms and security cameras and other such things, and unless I was mistaken, the lock on that door was one of his new models.

I turned my car off and fanned myself as I stepped out into the blazing, stagnant air on the roadside. My pseudo-wind was created entirely by driving, and now that I was standing still, the atmosphere felt heavy and sticky as it pressed against me. I had to fight to get it into my lungs as I made my way up the ten or twelve meter slope to the door.

The lock was indeed the one I had thought it was. I patted myself on the back a bit for recognizing my dad's latest product, and leaned closer to examine it. There was no handle on the outside; the door could only be opened by one who had the code, and that code required changing every week. This piece of equipment had been developed for high-security establishments, like jewelry shops and government offices and the like. My dad had once told me that the biggest problem with locks like this where the code was often changed was that the owners themselves would forget it and be locked out of their buildings and vaults. He had made this thing with a utility code that only those in top positions at his company knew about, and that was almost impossible to break, because it changed every sixty seconds.

I found myself snickering as my hand opened up my cell phone of its own accord and scrolled through the applications to the calculator. I wasn't planning on going into wherever the white wall encircled. I just wanted to try out the override system. I had never tried it, even though I had saved it in my phone just in case.

"The first three digits of the square root of the date," I murmured, "Plus three times the hour, minus the minute, divided by twelve, multiplied by three-hundred and sixty-five and one quarter, minus…" It was a long string of calculations, so I made sure to use the figures for three forty-eight, even though it was only forty-three when I started. I wasn't going to actually break in, of course. I just wanted to try the lock.

Who did I think I was kidding?

The door sprung open exactly as it was supposed to, with a heavy muffled click from the mechanism. I peeped inside, and caught my breath.

Inside the white wall was an immense garden. There were fruit trees and flowers and all sorts of exotic shrubs, interspersed with rock formations and statues and fountains. Multicolored birds preened themselves on the banks of a little man-made pond lined with marble and stocked with koi as long as my foot, and butterflies and hummingbirds were flitting around everywhere I looked. Some of the trees must have been shaped as saplings, because there were trunks that looked like they were braided together, and there was even a living gazebo of maples growing out of the soft earth, roofed by a thick layer of luscious green leaves.

It was paradise. It was also shady.

I barely even debated the wisdom of my idea as I hauled some homework and a sketchbook out of my car and slung my trusty picnic blanket across the insulated bag of pop I had brought along on my flight from the heat. The place was enormous, and the buildings inside the wall were so far away that there was no way anyone was going to come all the way across that vast expanse of cultivated jungle and catch me. I was just going to sit right inside the door for a little while and work on my homework, and maybe sketch or take some notes for a story idea. I wasn't underfoot or anything.

I found a nice cool spot where I was still in sight of the door and spread out my blanket. Then, utterly disregarding my homework, I lounged back and tapped the end of a pencil against the spiral binding of my sketchbook. The place was a dead ringer for fairyland or an elven kingdom, and it reminded me of a plot bunny I had been ignoring due to lack of inspiration. I giggled a little as I began to storyboard my ideas.

Some time went by, perhaps half an hour, before I heard a small rustling of the grass to my right and began thinking just how perfect it would be if a fluffy rabbit came hopping into sight. I strained my eyes, and to my surprise I found myself gazing at the next best thing.

A brown and black spotted cat sauntered into view, eyeing me not unkindly but with a measure of distrust. I loved cats, so I extended a hand and waited to see if it would come over to me. We stared each other down, and I tried to look as non-threatening as I could, in hopes he would let me pet him. After about a minute of padding back and forth between a pair of bushes a few meters away, he finally deigned to come over to me and let me stroke his ears. His fur was soft and well-groomed, and he was wearing a collar with a little metal charm on it that read "A-ru-sa," in Katakana.

"Arthur, huh?" I mused softly, inspecting the collar. "You must belong to the folks who live in this gigantic mansion then, huh?"

Just then, I heard a louder footstep, and then someone called out from close by.

"Arthur!" the voice shouted, "Where are you?"

It was a man's voice, and apparently Arthur did not consider him high enough on the food chain to pay attention to, because he chose that moment to curl up in my lap. I would have been okay with that, but the human footsteps were getting closer, and I really wasn't supposed to be there. I didn't have time to decode the lock again, so I scanned the wall for a tree tall enough to climb over. It was just as I located a suitable one that the owner of the voice came into view.

He was reasonably tall, though not as tall as others I knew, and had curly brown hair and soft green eyes. He was looking around with such a cute expression of exasperation on his face that before I was even aware of scrapping my escape plan, I had stood up and gathered the cat in my arms, laughing from deep in my throat.

The man noticed me within a few seconds, and the mixture of relief (probably at seeing his cat) and anger (probably at seeing me) was so comical that my chuckles morphed into paroxysms of laughter, and I was forces to clamp a hand over my mouth to try and act like I had at least a shred of courtesy.

"What are you doing here?" He demanded. His voice was nice; angry, but nice.

"Playing with your cat, it seems," I replied after subduing my mirth enough to speak coherently. "Arthur is yours, right?"

"Yes," he replied slowly, probably debating over whether I was mad or just stupid. Arthur climbed onto my shoulder and wrapped himself over my neck like a boa, tapping my face with his tail for no apparent reason.

"He seems to like me," I commented happily. I loved cats, but they usually lost interest in me quickly and wandered off.

"Yeah," the man replied, obviously still trying to read me. His hand drifted towards his hip where a long, highly decorated sword hung from an expensive-looking belt. That was a danger sign. I unwrapped Arthur and trotted over, plopping the cat into his owner's arms, from which he promptly sprang to the ground and sat at the man's feet, licking himself and looking heartily bored.

"What are you doing in here?" he snapped, closing his hand around his sword hilt. No luck on filling his hands. I turned and started gathering up my things.

"Trespassing," I replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, which frankly it was. "What does it look like I'm doing?" I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. To my immense gratification, he looked taken aback, exactly as I wished. Trying once more to discourage him from drawing his sword and slicing me up, I shoved my pile of stuff into his arms.

"Make yourself useful, will you?" I requested, and marched over to the tree by the wall, where I proceeded to swing myself up into the lower branches without too much difficulty. I did not plan to let him know that I knew about the manufacturer's override on the door lock; that would be tantamount to telling him my name and handing him an opportunity to have me arrested.

He seemed about to protest, but I interrupted him with a "don't peek!" Wearing a skirt that day was a better idea than I had realized when I put it on this morning. Just as I had hoped, he turned his face aside with a blush, and I was able to pluck my things out of his arms and toss them onto the top of the wall before he quite caught on to my scheme.

"Which is worse," I asked him as I sat on the wall with my legs dangling over the other side, "saying something that is almost certainly unwise, or telling a lie instead?" He paused in his attempts to scramble up the tree after me as he pondered his answer. I smirked. He was so easy to read it was almost sad: the nice friendly guy who doesn't really want to arrest the crazy lady, or see her panties, apparently, and who would of course try and come up with an answer to a question, even if it let his prey escape.

"It is worse to lie," he replied, looking up at me with narrowed eyes which were nonetheless a little interested.

"I'm glad we feel the same," I chirped, flinging my stuff in the general direction of my car. "I won't say I'm sorry then. You have a pretty garden though!" I turned around so that I was supporting all of my weight by my arms pressed against the wall and the rest of my body hanging into space the same way I would have if I was climbing out of a swimming pool.

The man was shouting something, probably, "come back here, you criminal!" but I had already propelled myself off into the air. It was as my eyes came level with the edge of the wall that I glanced at the building in the distance, and if I had not already been falling, I would have almost certainly slipped off of my perch.

On the side of the building, painted in vibrant colors and surrounded by what was probably a real gold border, was the royal coat of arms of Brittania.

The place I had just broken into and out of was the royal palace grounds.

Uh-oh.

_Tsuzuku!*_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

Do the ends justify the means? Is it right to gaze into someone's heart without his permission? Am I being manipulative? These are questions that have plagues civilized man since the dawn of time.

But mine is much simpler. Why in the name of all that's purple am I making this comedic story sound so serious?

Chapter 1) **Enter Pandora; Don't Underestimate Me!**

* Tsuzuku: Japanese for, "to be continued." (Literally: "it continues/will continue.")


	2. Chapter 2

**Enter Pandora; Don't Underestimate Me!**

"Uh-oh," is a really useful term. It wasn't exactly the one running through my head as I hit the ground outside the palace wall, rolled to a stop, hurled my stuff into my car and tried to turn it on, get it in gear and floor the accelerator all at the same time.

The number of letters was right though.

Uh-oh.

I hadn't even paid attention to which expressway I had taken out of the city where I lived, and I certainly hadn't had any good reason for the turns I made once I got off onto the highway. At least I didn't have to hunt for a map anymore. I knew my way home from the imperial city. If I had gone illegally fast on my way there, it was nothing compared to how I was driving now, but if I got pulled over, chances were it would be fore something worse than speeding.

Uh-oh.

I preferred to form my own opinions on people rather than trusting the word of others, even if I generally trusted them, but the only things I knew about the emperor and his reign came from the media, which cannot possibly exist in an unbiased form, no matter what anyone says. That was why I didn't know if he would try to hunt me down or not bother about it or _what_ he would do. If the media was to be believed, I would be in jail before the sun set, or maybe they would just execute me, but I wasn't certain if I trusted them. After all, if my hunch was correct, and my hunches had been pretty reliable thus far, the adorably confused guy with the cat was Suzaku Kururugi, the Knight of Zero who worked for the emperor. The media had certainly pegged him wrong, so they were probably off-target concerning his master too, weren't they?

I really hoped so.

By the time I got home I was running on fumes, and I decided that it was safe to risk a trip to the gas station. After all, if I found myself on the run from the law, I would need a full tank. Cursing all trees, flowers, shrubs, butterflies, fountains and fairylands to the deepest darkest pits of the underworld, I coasted into the gas station and shifted my weight from foot to foot as I tried to hurry the pump along by sheer willpower.

_Naturally,_ I had left my stupid backpack at home and only brought cash with me, so I was forced to physically enter the little store to pay for my fuel. There was a crummy television turned on, and I stared intently at the screen as I stood in line. The news was on, and I watched the blonde anchorwoman, Molly or Mary or something like that, talk breezily about some construction project going on a few cities away.

At least they hadn't plastered my picture all over the place with the caption, "wanted: dead or alive," on it. Not yet anyway. I paid for my gas and bought an iced coffee drink without having to say much of anything, which was good, for I did not trust my voice. I even tried my level best to heed all traffic laws on my way home, and was able to exchange the obligatory pleasantries with my neighbor when I passed her in the hallway.

I got inside my apartment, locked the door behind me, and slumped against my kitchen counter. This was really bad. It was worse because I didn't know how bad it was. If I was certain that evil minions were going to show up at my door in an hour, I'd get my stuff together and make a break for it in fifteen minutes. On the other hand, I really didn't want to randomly go on the run just because I thought someone might come. I paced around my little kitchen table three times, then five, then a dozen, then twenty and thirty.

Suzaku had not seemed like the sort of person who'd send goons to haul me off to the dungeon for something as petty as being in a corner of the garden playing with his cat without permission. Then again, I didn't know what sort of person lived beneath the (cough-**stupid-looking**-cough) crown of emperor Lelouch. My brain ran in circles outsmarting itself and my thoughts tripped over one another until I was forced to dump most of my coffee drink down the drain to save myself from the caffeine/stressed induced stomach ache I often got in situations like this.

That was when I heard the thunder.

I flung the window open so hard it rattled the frame, and stood staring at what I could see of the sun setting in the distance through the thinner clouds near the horizon. The pouring rain caught and refracted the light, and lightning tore apart the sky, almost in the same moment as thunder shook the very foundations of the earth.

I don't know if I'm ADD; I might be, though I've never been tested. Even if I'm not, it isn't surprising that I would manage to be distracted from a life-and-death quandary by an ordinary thunderstorm. I love thunderstorms, especially when it's hot out.

The lightning flashed so brightly that it affected me like a strobe light as I jogged out of the apartment building into the deluge. It was pouring so hard that in less than ten seconds I felt as if I had just climbed out of a swimming pool, and the thunder was so loud that once it nearly knocked me off my feet as I loped down the sidewalk, probably looking very drunk with a loony grin plastered across my face and my long skirt gathered into my hands to keep it from trailing in the mud that was being swept across my path. I felt euphoric.

There was no way the scary emperor was going to send minions after me. Suzaku probably wouldn't even bother telling him. Maybe that part of the garden was public property. Well, okay, that was a stretch, but my panic was subsiding and giving way to more rational thought in sporadic leaps that were hard to follow. With all the former nobles who were rising up against him and all of the rebel factions blowing things up in the north, he couldn't possibly have time to work particularly hard at catching me for something as inconsequential as poking my nose into his yard, right?

It didn't have to make sense. It made me feel better. Whatever happened, I doubted that I'd be able to escape anyway, so there was really no point in worrying about it. I ran across the lobby of the apartment building, trying not to drip too much water from my sodden skirt on the clean tiles, and took the stairs to my place three at a time.

Nothing was going to happen. I made myself dinner and hung my skirt and tank top in the shower to drip dry, walking around in the camisole I usually slept in even though it was hours before I'd be tired. The cold wind from the storm blew through my window in soft puffs every once in a while since its actual direction was slanted away from the wall, and none of the rain came through. I was just settling in to watch some anime when the phone rang.

I glanced at caller ID and rolled my eyes in annoyance as the words, "Unknown name, unknown number," flashed across the little screen.

"Hello," I greeted the telemarketer as I put the DVD player on pause, "this is the _Mancha Pizzeria_. How may I help you?" It was my fallback line for anyone I wanted to get rid of fast, and nine times out of ten, the next thing I heard would be the click and beeping sound as whoever the heck it was hung up on me. I really hoped that the dumb telemarketer people kept records and took me off their lists as a wrong number.

"Hello," said a familiar man's voice. "I'm looking for a Monozuki Koneko-san."

I froze for a split second. So much for nothing happening.

"I'm sorry," I told Suzaku Kururugi's voice in a passable imitation of politeness, "but I believe you have the wrong number. My name is Christine, and this is the Mancha Pizzeria in Garrick, the one on Fifth Street, by the bank. We don't have any elevens… sorry, I mean Japanese, working here."

"She is not Japanese," Suzaku replied coolly. "She's a Brittanian who happened to have a Japanese ancestor on her father's side, whose name she inherited, though the actual bloodline of this person is almost gone. I believe I am speaking to her."

"My deepest apologies, sir," I lied with equal or greater frost to my tone, "but I tell you again, you have the wrong number. If you would like to speak with a manager, I will call one for you. There is no one by that name working here. I suggest you make certain that the number you have dialed is the correct one."

There was a click on the other end, and then I heard a dial tone.

I dropped the phone back onto its charger and took a deep steadying breath. Suzaku had called himself instead of having a minion do it for him. Did that mean he was the sort of person who just liked to do things on his own, or was he keeping my transgression a secret? If the latter was true, then why was he doing so?

I gave up on anime and went to bed. If he was using the phone, then at very least, he probably didn't want to plod all the way over to my house and hour's drive or more away. Maybe he even didn't know where I lived, though I didn't have very high hopes on that possibility. Whatever the reason, I was probably safe for tonight, so I rolled over to face the wall and let my mind wander into the realm of the plot bunnies. For all it had gotten me in trouble, the one I was working on right now was really quite interesting.

The next day was a Saturday, so after I got up and did a power-hour of cleaning to try and get the top five or ten layers of clutter off of every available surface, I grabbed my Keiko-Gi and my boken and ran the three blocks to the dojo where I studied Aikido and Iaido. I had gotten into martial arts in middle-school because it reminded me of what all my favorite anime characters did and, when I moved out of my parents' house to attend school in Japan, I took it up again after a bit of a hiatus.

I had an excellent practice, culminating in a spectacular throw of my friend Ryan which he only got out of because he knew how to do airborne falls. My fellow students and I all went out for lunch afterwards, and I swung by my place for a shower and some makeup before driving off to work. It was a slow day at the store where I was employed, and that irritated me because my manager would tell me to "help with stock or something," when there was no one in line, as opposed to, "Put this candy out on the shelves, and then price all these books." Honestly, wasn't telling me what to do his job? Why exactly did I have to traipse through the store, vainly looking for something that needed doing?

It irritated me secondly because I had time to think, which translates roughly to: time to wonder if I would come home to find my apartment ransacked and a poster nailed to my door that read, "criminal; shoot on sight."

I really needed to find something else to occupy my brain, because aside from making me stressed out to the point of needing to upchuck, I had wrung this topic so ragged that even in my fear it had stagnated and become boring.

After work, before I even started my car to go home, I changed out of my obligatory closed-toed shoes into flip-flops, unzipped the extensions that made my short shorts into cargo shorts long enough to pass the dress code rule, and removed my uniform shirt to expose the tank-top and lacy cami underneath. It was a little warmer in layers during work, but the store had A/C and it was worth it to be able to change in my car inside of a minute. I went grocery shopping on my way home, and was feeling pretty good about how my day had gone, and a little hungry as I pulled into my parking spot.

With my arms loaded up with grocery bags and my shed clothing and shoes, I trudged clumsily up the stairs towards my floor, but when I got there, I froze. There was a man standing in front of my door.

A man with curly hair, who was reasonably tall, but shorter than a lot of people I know.

Uh-oh.

Suzaku Kururugi was knocking with an expression that suggested this was the fourth or fifth time at least, and I heard him call in frustration, "You're not going to pass this off as a pizza place, Monozuki-san."

I really should have run, but you know, I think I am ADD after all, because when I saw him take a pocket knife to my lock, I ambled up behind him and murmured in his ear, "Breaking and entering is a crime, you know." He jumped and as far as I could tell, gasped and swallowed at the same time, because the next several seconds were spent in a fit of coughing that sounded rather painful.

"For the highest ranking knight in the kingdom," I commented, "you startle pretty easily. If you raise your hands above your head, it'll straighten out your trachea and help you breathe better." I cringed a moment later as I heard myself. Why did I have to revert to snarky mode right at the worst possible times?

Suzaku glared balefully at me as he coughed into his hand. His green eyes had lost their softness in favor of an almost metallic intensity, and I was so scared for a moment that I almost dropped all my bags, but I regained my wits (what of them I had to begin with) and for the third time in our acquaintance, I dropped my armload of stuff into his hands.

"So that's him, huh?" I commented as I fumbled with my key in the lock. "The scary version from on TV?" in my peripheral vision, I glimpsed his eyes widen a little before they turned back into green daggers of rage. He half-set half-dropped my shopping bags down on the hallway floor.

"You are guilty of trespassing on the private property of his majesty, 99th Emperor Lelouch Vi Brittania," he seethed. "You are hereby under arrest, by order of The Knight of Zero, I, Suzaku—"

"Kururugi," I interrupted with a gusty sigh and a dramatic roll of my eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I get it."

I successfully unlocked my door, flung it open as I barreled through it, and slammed it into Kururugi's torso as he started after me. Yanking it back open, I sidestepped as he stumbled into the room and caught hold of his arm, twisting it behind him and forcing him to the ground with my knee jammed into his ribs.

"You underestimated me, sir knight," I announced, hamming it up for no good reason. My adrenaline was pumping through me like yesterday's thunder, and I was feeling pretty good about having just floored the greatest knight in the world, even though using the door was probably a dirty trick. Actually, going at him from behind wasn't too clean either.

I came crashing down from my high, and released his arm, springing away so he couldn't grab my ankles.

"You lost the fight," I reminded him on impulse, "so now you have to buy me dinner."

"What?" he exclaimed, and he had every right to. If I didn't know why I was saying that, it had to be a real bolt out of the blue for him. His voice cracked, and it was so funny I had to work hard to keep from laughing. Instead, I strode over to him and put a finger over his lips to stop his protests.

"You caught me breaking into your place, I caught you breaking into my place; we're square." I said, hoping my pseudo-logic would catch him off guard and prevent him from pulling out a sword and dicing me up into small pieces. It was then that it occurred to me that he was neither wearing his sword, nor accompanied by and minions, assistants or mecha from what I could see.

"You came alone?" I queried, cocking my head to one side as I often did when confused.

"One should have been all that I needed," he growled, "if you had not—"

"Used dirty, underhanded tricks and ignobly kicked your noble rear end," I interrupted again, whirling around and heading for my bedroom. "You can always attack me again, but I have a question for you."

Silence was my only response.

"Would you really strike a woman while her back is turned?" I asked.

I wanted to know that answer myself. Well, what I _really_ wanted was to know that I had gambled on the _correct_ answer. Exposing myself to a hostile knight whom I had just dishonorably taken down was probably going to backfire and get me killed, but no matter what I had seen on television or heard from other people, I stubbornly insisted on forming my own opinions. That, my unreasonable tenacity, was why I desperately wanted to be right in thinking he was the sort of chivalrous character who wouldn't attack me while my back was turned.

I stood perfectly still, a hand resting on my bedroom door, feeling my heart pound throughout my whole body, right down to my toes.

"Would you?" I challenged softly.

If he did, I was toast.

If he didn't, I was as good of a judge of character as I always tried to be.

I heard him walking slowly towards me, and stop when he was so close that in the stillness of the indoor air, I could feel the slightest whisper of his breath against the back of my neck, where my short hair did not cover the skin.

"No," he finally answered, and I tried to sigh as quietly as I could, covering up the noise by sliding my door open.

"Where are you going?" he demanded, though without the venom that had been in his voice before.

"To get changed," I replied. "You're taking me out to dinner, remember?"

I slammed the door shut on his protests.

After panting quietly from the release of tension, I dug through my closet until I located my "little black dress;" the mid-calf backless handkerchief dress with the high, Chinese-looking halter neckline and gold piping. It was semi-formal, which matched well with Suzaku's subdued-yet-obviously-really-expensive-tailor-made suit. I ran a comb through my short, layered brown hair and put on some mascara and cover-up. Grabbing my black high-heeled sandals from the back corner of my closet, I slid my door back open just in time to catch Suzaku in the act of unloading a sidearm and stashing the bullets in his pockets.

"So you didn't come wholly unprepared," I commented approvingly, stomach twisting in hindsight terror as I imagined how painful it would have been if he had shot me two minutes ago.

"Where exactly do you expect me to take you?" he asked, looking me over with an eyebrow raised.

"I don't really care," I replied truthfully. Since the previous night, I'd had pizza on the brain if I had to pick something. "I just didn't want to look like a ragamuffin next to an oil tycoon. Anyway, I never get to wear this."

"So then where do you want to go?" he asked again as I hopped down the step into the entryway and slipped on my sandals. I smiled.

"If I tell you, will you take me there?" I asked with my eyes narrowed and calculating. He looked at me for a few seconds and then nodded. I grinned the lopsided Cheshire-cat grin that I've been told makes me look positively diabolical.

"I'm not going to suggest anywhere!" I exclaimed. The idea had come to me when I was putting on my mascara. Kururugi was an interesting person; why not learn more about him? People-reading could be more enjoyable than book reading when the subject is interesting enough.

"Huh?" he supplied, obviously confused.

"You are a high-ranking knight of Brittania," I listed, counting off his traits on my fingers. "You are a Japanese native, son of the former prime minister. You're bothered enough by the dishonor to the Emperor that you would come yourself to arrest the perpetrator—oh cool it," I snapped, "if you really don't want anyone going in there, put up a no-trespassing sign or something, 'cause I didn't see one. Even though I've even given you every right to hate my guts, arrest me and have me beheaded or disemboweled or something horrible like that, you didn't attack me when my back was turned. In short, you're interesting. In light of all of this, I now want to know the answer you will give to this quandary.

A singularly annoying person against whom you have a substantial grudge just decided you have to take her out to dinner for some stupid reason. _Where do you take her?"_

Comprehension dawned visibly on his face, and he thought for a minute before opening the door into the hallway and gesturing for me to follow him. We exited the building and he ushered me into his car. I lounged in the passenger seat, staring alternately out the window at the scenery and to my right at the driver. It was disconcerting, being on the left side of the car and not driving. My car was western, and though I had long ago gotten used to driving on the "wrong side of the street," I didn't often ride in eastern vehicles.

Suzaku's face was unreadable, but that was okay. I didn't need to know anything more right then. He might take me to a dive because he had no obligation to treat me to a nice dinner. He might take me to a five-star restaurant just because he could. It really didn't matter to me; I was burning with curiosity to see what else I could discover from this little test about his character.

We rode in the car for about twenty minutes before he pulled into the parking lot of an unremarkable strip mall.

"Are you afraid of fire?" he asked me, and there was a hint of challenge in his face.

"Fire, lightning, and anything with fangs and claws," I replied flatly, "are the sum total of the list of things I want for my next birthday. Why?"

"Because you're about to see a lot of it," he replied mysteriously, and got out of the car. I followed him across the parking lot into a restaurant with a large sign over the door that I took great care not to look at. He held the door open for me, and I walked past him without breaking eye-contact. I hoped my expression said what I wanted it to.

'Let's see what you've got, Mr. Knight,' was what I was going for. He smirked. He got it.

Back into Brittania, I had been to a _hibachi_ grill* a grand total of four times; twice with my family, and twice with a friend. They were expensive over there, and I didn't know if they were the same over here or not, but the guy doing the buying was both trustworthy enough to actually cover my bill and rich enough not to mind.

The _hibachi_ place he had taken me too wasn't big or fancy; there were maybe six or seven tables, and I think I was the only Brittanian customer in the whole place. Suzaku tipped the hostess who seated us, and we ended up all the way in a corner, somewhat sheltered by a decorative screen. He didn't need to explain. Neither a Brittanian nor the emperor's knight needed to be seen too clearly.

The chef took his sweet time showing up, and I got the feeling when he did that this man had drawn the short straw at the culmination of a heated debate. He was very respectful, and obviously frightened, but I think when he saw my reaction to the onion volcano that shot a column of flame almost to the ceiling, he warmed up a little. I loved fire almost as much as thunderstorms and I know I look like a happy little kid when I stare at it. The chef loosened up after a few minutes, and so did Suzaku, apparently.

"I used to come to this place a long time ago," he told me. "I always thought what they did was just like magic. This was the first place where I thought of cooking as anything more than shoving a few things in a pan." I nodded appreciatively.

"This is how I learned to make fried rice; by watching these guys back in the homeland. It looked as simple as throwing a bunch of things on a hot surface and sliding them around, so even though it used to be that I would rather mow the lawn then prepare even the simplest of foods, I tried it. I got out a bunch of leftovers and threw 'em in a pan with some cold rice and soy sauce and stuff."

"And?" he prodded.

"It was delicious, believe it or not. It had pork tenderloin and veggies and some other stuff, maybe chives, whatever spices my mom threw in, and egg, definitely egg. The trouble is that we didn't measure anything, so it isn't something we can ever recreate," I admitted sheepishly. We both laughed.

Under the _hibachi_ chef's hands, and through them and over them, the preparation of the food was transformed into an evening's entertainment that rivaled any movie. Suzaku bought sake for himself and for me, and no one even asked how old I was, either because drinking age in Japan was eighteen or something, or because nobody wanted to cross Kururugi Suzaku and whatever he wanted. I didn't actually know what legal age was in Japan; it had never really mattered to me, since alcohol bothered my stomach. I sipped a little bit at the sake, but I probably only drank a tablespoon throughout the evening.

Suzaku warmed up more and more, either because of the drink or just because he was becoming more comfortable, and he started telling me about his childhood, and his cousin Kaguya, and his teacher Tohdoh. He even admitted to having known the emperor when they were growing up, but when I plied him with questions, he started rapidly changing subjects until I quit.

It was late, around ten or so, when he took me home. I had watched his sake intake with a hawk's eyes the whole evening, so I was reasonably satisfied with the stability of his driving.

"Are you going to arrest me?" I blurted out as we pulled into the lot at my apartment building. He looked over at me in surprise. Either he really had no intention of doing so at all, or he had forgotten.

"I'd rather not spend the next however long wondering if you are planning on actually punishing me or not," I explained. "So please just tell me now, are you going to arrest me or not?"

"I'm not going to arrest you," he replied, but he sounded a little unsure.

"Multiple-personality disorder kicking in?" I asked. He did a double-take and blinked several times in quick succession.

"There's the 'you' from today and yesterday," I explained, "and the 'you' I keep seeing on TV blowing away former noblemen and shadowing the emperor like a guard dog and whatnot. It's like _that_ 'you' wants me behind bars or killed, but _this_ 'you' kinda' likes me, or at least doesn't think I'm worth the effort. Have I got it right?"

"It's something like that," he acceded. "Either way, if I find you've plastered my life's story all over the internet, or told half a dozen of your friends that I took you out for dinner, you will find yourself in very hot water, do you understand me?" He glared at me and I shivered.

"Abso-flippin'-lutely," I agreed, caught off-guard by the sudden reappearance of "the angry eyes." I opened the door and stepped out into the tepid spring night.

"We should do this again sometime," I suggested impetuously, a hand on the door ready to shut it. "Sans the cheap shots on my part, okay? Here," I pulled a notebook out of my purse and scribbled down my cell phone number. "I try to avoid using telephones for their intended purpose, so text me, will you?"

"As long as you don't pretend to be a pizza joint again," he agreed with a bit of a glare that was a lot less disconcerting than his last one. I grinned my Cheshire-cat grin.

"Don't block your number next time, and I won't have to," I suggested, and closed the door behind me as I turned and walked, high heels clicking pleasantly against the pavement, into the door of the apartment building.

Interesting, I thought excitedly. He's so interesting I could watch him for a week and never get bored!

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

I believe in fate; that everything that happens does so for a reason. But sometimes I cannot help but want to know what the reason behind events is.

That is why I must ask.

WHY OH WHY DIDN'T I THINK TO GET **HIS** NUMBER?

Chapter 2) **Scheherazade; Loser Buys Dinner!**

*****_**Hibachi**_** restaurants have a wide griddle built into the table, with a wooden rim for plates and chopsticks and whatnot all around the outside. The chefs do all kinds of tricks, juggling their cutlery and making a stack of the rings of a halved onion into a mountain, filling it with alcohol an setting it on fire to make a little volcano. It's really quite something, but it's horrendously expensive, at least where I live! (I'm in the Midwest United States.) **


	3. Chapter 3

**Scheherazade; Loser Buys Dinner!**

Suzaku never texted me.

My graduation ceremony was a more subdued event than I had always imagined. I suppose that's because while I had made plenty of friends over here in Japan, all of my childhood buddies still lived in Britannia. My parents flew in the day before and got a hotel, for which I was grateful. Even if I had been inclined to practically sterilize my apartment so they wouldn't be stepping over piles of junk, the fact remained that my place was very small, consisting of a kitchen and living room combo, a tiny bedroom and a bathroom with—thank goodness—a Japanese bathtub. The ones back in Britannia were maddening because I could never properly immerse myself.

The bad news about my folks staying in a different place from me was that my father's Japanese was limited to "thanks," and "good afternoon," and "boss," and my mother's consisted entirely of cuisine-related words and general pleasantries. The nearest Britannian hotel had been blown up by terrorists years ago and never rebuilt, so on the morning of my graduation I had to leave at six to pick up my parents in one direction and then race time to school in the other.

Afterwards was fun though. We went shopping in Tokyo and bought kimonos and soundtracks all sorts of other anime paraphernalia, and my dad was the good sport he always was and carried the ever-increasing load of junk back and forth to the car that had once been his. We had to make two trips back to their hotel to dump the stuff in the trunk and the open seats, since the little car wasn't really big enough to hold all of it. The sun was setting as we finally ran out of steam, and I dropped my folks off at their hotel with my sincerest regrets that they wouldn't still be in the country the next weekend when I took my black-belt test. They had to leave the next morning.

I had decided to go to high school in Japan for two reasons: first because I've been an otaku since I was old enough to appreciate anime (three years old, in point of fact) and second because Sozo Academy had the best art and writing curriculum of any school in the world. I had now graduated, but I had decided that I hadn't lived long enough in Japan, so I was planning to stay at least for one more summer before making the decision of whether to move back to the homeland or not.

After my parents' flight left, I sat around at the airport for a long time; scribbling down notes for the novel I had started writing in my first year of high school and then abandoned due to lack of spare time. I had nothing but time now, so I resolved to work on it with more seriousness over the summer. Wouldn't it be great, I thought with relish, if I could quit my part time job because I had a published book bringing in cash?

I was in mid-build of my little "castle in the air," when an airport employee turned up to chivvy me out of the waiting area to make room for some important "who-ha in the sky" government passengers whose flight would soon be landing, and who didn't want the building to be crowded. Grumbling, I was about to thrust my notebook back into my bag and shuffle off as slowly as humanly possible when I slipped on something and, in the struggle to regain my balance, my cell phone went flying out of my hand and upon hitting the floor, the back popped off and the battery snapped out.

This was a typical reaction from my phone when it received impact, and I was more resigned than worried as I scooped up the parts, but as I was chivvied along in an ever growing crowd as the other terminals were emptied, I stumbled once more, and it wasn't until I was almost within sight of the front door that I realized that the cell phone battery had fallen out of my hand a second time.

I didn't try to fight the swell of the crowd. Instead, I maneuvered off to one side and emerged from its right flank. Stuffing the remaining two parts of my phone into my bag and zipping the compartment shut, I jogged back towards the terminal I had just left, hugging the wall and scanning the floor, desperately hoping I had dropped the dumb thing somewhere close, instead of inside the terminal itself.

_Of course_ my luck wasn't that good.

I tried to slip unobtrusively into the big room, but as I crept toward where I had been sitting, I couldn't help but take a little peek at the "who-ha government people" who had ousted me from my newest writing locale.

Suzaku and I made eye-contact.

Once again: Uh-oh.

I averted my gaze for about three seconds until I spotted the flat silver battery on the floor and scooped it up, but by then it was too late. I heard footsteps coming towards me, and voices yelling in anger, something about disrespect, I thought.

Slipping the battery into my bag, I straightened up and held my hands in the air at about shoulder height.

"My bad," I called over the hubbub of airport employees apologizing and masked imperial goons shouting. "I just dropped something—hey, get that thing outta' my face!" Before I even realized what I was doing, a guard's gun was in my hand, held back out of his reach. "That's awfully rude, y'know," I snapped. Something about these identical faceless underlings irritated me so much that I ceased temporarily to care that they were in the service of the "who-ha government dude" known as the _emperor of most of the world_. I thumped the goon over the head with the butt end of his own gun before giving it back to him. "Jerk," I growled.

Apparently that set them off, because in another minute I found myself sincerely grateful for all the extra training I had been putting in for my upcoming rank advancement test. I took another gun away from a different goon, or maybe it was the same one, I couldn't tell, and used it like a boken. Their fighting moves were so predictable it was ridiculous, and I fought them off mechanically, using a basic attack form from way back when I had studied Hapkido at a local health club, before I had gotten into Aikido and Iaido. I was almost ready to give up imperial security as a bad job when I got a sudden shiver down my spine and turned to my left just in time to deflect a blow from Suzaku's sword.

I had forgotten about him.

He sprang away as I slid off to one side into a more solid fighting stance. We glared into each other's eyes for a long moment, each of us sizing the other up.

"Rematch," I finally announced. "This is a rematch. I won't cheat this time, alright? So you'd better not either."

Suzaku nodded with steely eyes.

"Loser buys dinner," I wagered, and swung at his ribcage from below. He blocked with astonishing speed, and after that, I was hard-pressed to keep my footing and dodge his seeking blade. Practicing in a dojo with wooden weapons was one thing, but Suzaku's sword had a point like a needle, and it was much longer than the ones I was used to. I found myself using the gun, which was almost as long as a typical boken, for mostly dagger-versus-sword techniques.

The television had not fully conveyed the full extent of this man's prowess in battle. His legs, his arms and his sword were like many facets of a deadly living weapon, and I wasn't so stupid as to deny that I was out of my league by a considerable margin. The door trick had been a lucky break; without a cheap shot like that to hide behind, I was well aware that my life was as much in his hands as the velvet grip of his blade. I could only hope it was of more value. Forced back until I was only a little ways from the terminal wall, I decided to go for the only thing I remembered how to do, and knocked his sword point away, losing the gun in the process, so that I could get in close and punch him in the nose.

With a clang, both of out weapons fell discarded to the ground as he sidestepped my punch with the simple grace I had always admired about well executed aikido moves, grabbed my wrist as I fell past him, and twisted my arm behind my back. His hands were gentle, and I feared that. One of my Sensei had always been like that; her hands were so gentle, they were impossible to take seriously.

One little movement and they would turn to fetters of raw diamond.

I didn't move. I barely breathed.

"Impressive," commented a voice, followed by the clapping of a single pair of hands. I looked up, and felt like the stupidest person alive. Suzaku Kururugi was here. The imperial royal guard was here. The terminal was being cleared out by nervous employees. Who else might be here? Was there a possibility that maybe, _just maybe, the emperor was here too?_

_Duh!_

"I do not often come across those with the skill to oppose Suzaku with that degree of success," the emperor commented, continuing to applaud as he strode towards us. Suzaku applied pressure to my wrist, trying to force me down. Once again, my snarky side got the better of me.

"Suzaku," I addressed him with a withering stare, "if at any time I feel inclined to bow, you can be certain I will do so with all haste. Please quit twisting my wrist, it's painful."

"Oh?" the emperor exclaimed, "you do not acknowledge the ruler of your own homeland, the Holy Britannian Empire?"

"Which is better," I asked, "to say something exceedingly foolish, or to tell a lie?" I was careful to keep my voice steady despite the increasing pain from my wrist. That dummy must have been twisting it pretty far, because my wrists will just bend and bend and bend until suddenly they won't bend anymore, and at that point they're in grave danger of breaking. It was always hard for me to figure out how long to wait before going down on a hand-twisting technique in class.

"I would submit a different answer," the emperor replied. "I would say that it is better to keep silent in the face of that difficulty, thus avoiding both negatives."

"And if one is rather famous for being without the ability to keep silent?" I probed. He smiled thinly, like a snake staring down its meal.

"Then it is better to tell the lie and save oneself." He replied silkily. I slid one foot forward and sank down to one knee.

"In that case," I declared with as much ice in my tone as I knew how to muster (though why I had to be sarcastic at that moment, I still don't know) "I sincerely apologize for disturbing your vitally important landing and disembarkation. I'm really very sorry; please forgive me."

Perhaps it was a lie, the comment that I did not know why I did that. At least I can say this: I was looking hungrily up through my thick bangs to see his reaction, dying to know what he would do because I had taken his advice, even if it literally killed me like the cat in the proverb.

"Intriguing," he pronounced after an agonizingly long time. "And what would your opinion be on the subject?" I shook my hair out of my face so that my brown eyes could look unobstructed into his violet ones.

"I should have thought that would be obvious sir," I replied quietly. "My opinion is that it depends entirely on the audience."

"You are a brave woman," he observed. I was glad Suzaku didn't rat me out for my pounding pulse and trembling fingers. Maybe he though that was a side-effect of his abuse of my poor wrist. "But," the emperor continued, "I'm afraid your impertinence will come at a cost. You have disrespected a very important person, you see."

He's going to kill me, I thought wildly, holding my face like a mask over my alarmed mind.

"Perhaps, sir," I suggested, not humbly, but at least in a quieter voice and without sarcasm, "you would consider this." His eyes were cold and sharp as razors. Suzaku's were never like this. His scowls were at least true scowls, but the emperor's face was still in a passive smiling expression. His eyes and face did not match at all. "I owe Suzaku a dinner, since he beat me in the fight."

The emperor considered this, while I considered the fact that my brash experimentation with people's minds was most likely going to cost me my life. I had no feeling left in the hand Suzaku had hold of.

"Vey well then," Lelouch Vi Britannia conceded, "but on one condition. I will be accompanying you."

I was taken aback, but I nodded, and mercifully Suzaku released me. I tried to massage some life back into my fingers as I stood.

I was a bit bolder after that, and got not only Suzaku's number but the emperor's as well.

"Scheduling a get-together is a pain when one has no contact information," I commented, shooting venomous glares at Suzaku. "So I'll be sure to text you both _tonight_" —glare— "so you can get my number"—glare— "and we'll find a time this week that'll work, alright?"

By the time I got home, I had gotten lost half a dozen times; quite a feat for the entire trip being down a total of two roads, but it was me after all, and I was in shock. I stumbled into my apartment and flung myself onto my bed before sliding open my phone and sending a text message to both Lelouch and Suzaku that said, [Hi, this is Koneko! Save my number, kk?]

Suzaku responded with [Right.] and Lelouch with [I look forward to our next meeting, Monozuki-san. I'm sure it will be most enlightening.]

[And entertaining, :3 ] I added. [I love trying to figure people out, so expect me to uncover all of your deepest, darkest secrets, kk?]

As I waited with infrequent, shallow breaths for a response to that, I wished more than I had ever wished for anything that the wretched cancel button _actually worked_. So much for any attempt to convince him that I _wasn't_ impertinent.

[Aren't you concerned that you'll find out something you'd rather not know?] He asked.

[No,] I replied firmly. At this point, I hadn't much to lose. [Not at all; I'd always rather know than not know. What about you?]

[I think perhaps we are the same in that respect.]

Just like that, I was texting with the king of the world. We sent messages back and forth for more than an hour and a half. We talked about truth, about politics, and a dozen other topics. I had never been on a debate team or anything, but I couldn't possibly imagine a more interesting opponent. After we finally finished texting, I hopped on the computer to internet search good restaurants in the area between the imperial palace and my apartment.

It took me ages to find something suitable; it was called "Taste of Paradise," and it had a little cuisine from almost every country in the world. It wasn't a super high-end place, but it wasn't a dump either, and after scanning the menus and calculating what would happen if they both ate like those male anime characters who never seem to gain weight, I concluded that if I suspended the fixing of my A/C for another month and didn't take my car out anywhere I couldn't walk to, I could safely have enough to make the top end bill.

Of course, if Lelouch was going to have me killed afterwards, I wasn't going to need an A/C or gasoline anyway.

I cried myself to sleep that night. Life really sucked. The emperor was terrifying, like a serpent in a human body. The blood red eyes on his robe were a thousand times less terrifying than his own soft violet ones, and even worse was the fact that he could hold a perfectly civil (and I had to admit, highly entertaining) conversation with his intended victim.

Those eyes were going to watch me die, I was certain of it. I was so certain that the next morning, I emptied to contents of my savings account into checking. There was absolutely no good reason to still have it. Images of his eyes haunted me like the way a bright light is visible as a multicolored starburst behind closed eyelids. Nothing I did would dislodge the image of his face, with its sinister smile upon the lips that were going to order my imprisonment, torture, execution or all of the above. I was like a specter at work and later at the dojo, and Ryan did a passable golden retriever impression as he hovered around me, asking over and over what was wrong.

I texted Lelouch and Suzaku the location of the restaurant and my suggestions of date and time. Lelouch and I ended up in another Socratic debate, but I couldn't really hold up my end of it, and I got out of it as soon as I could. He kept texting me though, almost as if he was bored, or lonely, or…

Or interested.

Once the idea got hold of me, it was parasitic, taking over all of my faculties and absorbing my consciousness. I couldn't remember the name, but it was the queen from the Arabian nights, wasn't it? She had kept herself alive by keeping the king interested in the stories she would tell each night, and always dropping off at a cliff-hanger.

It only took a few minutes for me to come crashing down from my happy little bubble of hope. I was a bit crazy, and (I hoped) a little more interesting than your average teenage girl, but not that interesting, and even though I did write stories, they weren't good enough to pull off something like that. Still, I had to look up Queen Scheherazade's name online, because not even knowing that much was plaguing me like a swarm of gnats.

Even though that tiny-corner-of-a-plan-that-would-never-work had been discarded, I was marginally comforted. That idea was a failure, but mightn't I come up with something better? It was with that in mind that I pulled on my favorite skirt, tiered, robin's-egg-blue with hand-embroidered patterns, and a dark teal tank top with a white lace insert at the neckline for modesty. I considered leaving out the lace; maybe he'd take pity on me for cleavage's sake? But I had standards of dress I didn't plan on abandoning, especially in front of that serpent of a man. Besides, I needed all my wits about me, and couldn't afford to be distracted by feeling naked.

Before I left the house, I left a letter on my kitchen table for Ryan, though I only addressed it as "To my friend and his brother." Ryan would be the only one who knew what that meant. If this was going to be my last night on earth, I had to let someone know what was going on. Ryan's family and several others at my dojo were "connected with people who were connected with other people who knew things about a certain rebel faction."

They may as well know how to open the lock, and I gave them a bunch of other information on how to outwit various security systems. I also told them how to distract Suzaku. This way, even if I was killed, I might be able to throw my two cents into the pot that would eventually bring my murderers crashing down. I felt a bit wretched for telling them about how Suzaku's courtesy was his Achilles' heel; after all, I rather liked him, but he worked for emperor Lelouch, the snake, the wolf, evil incarnate. He had to be taken down along with his master.

I hopped in my car and attempted to keep the speed limit on my way there. I had left with a ridiculously long margin of time for error or traffic, and consequently I arrived half an hour early. I pulled out my notebook and started jotting down an outline for a new Idea I had just had; a modern Arabian nights, of all things. I became so engrossed that it wasn't until someone came and knocked on the roof of my car that I remembered where I was and why I was there.

I looked up and almost did a double-take. Lelouch was there in a sleeveless black turtleneck and black jeans, with an orange jacket and a wallet chain hanging out of his pants pocket. Suzaku was behind him in jeans and a long blue coat with the white trim and the sleeves rolled up. It was beyond weird that they were both wearing jackets in this weather, but the sun was setting and it was cooling off slightly. I did not own a sweater or anything that matched what I was wearing, so I was sure to have gooseflesh on the way home.

Assuming I drove myself home, as opposed to being carted off by policemen.

I stuffed my notebook in the back seat and unbuckled my seatbelt as Lelouch opened the door and extended me a hand. His eyes still had the cold, snaky look to them, but his expression and actions were courteous, so at least he wasn't going to have his goons kill me right that second. I took his hand and got out of the car, hoping my skirt wouldn't snag on anything.

The restaurant wasn't very crowded, and this was a good thing. Without his crown and ridiculous-looking outfit, nobody really recognized Lelouch, and Suzaku wore his sunglasses. We were all three quiet for a while, but eventually a few polite comments degenerated into a real conversation and, as before, Suzaku loosened up little by little, and I became more comfortable. Lelouch was even more brilliant in person, and we somehow got onto the subject of "masks." This was a topic I liked; after all, one of my favorite hobbies was trying to see through those of other people.

"Everyone wears a mask, even if it's only as simple as courtesy," I explained. "For example; 'Suzaku! Fix your collar, scruffy!'" Suzaku actually looked self-conscious and started pulling at the offensive piece of clothing. "That was what I was thinking, but I hide it behind the mask of courtesy, pretending that I don't notice or don't care. Masks are necessary to a functional society."

Even though I pretended to be looking at Suzaku, I slipped a glance at Lelouch out of the corner of my eye and froze, staring out of my peripheral vision. His eyes had lost all of their hardness, and his little amused smile actually looked genuine. I turned to face him, and as suddenly as the expression had come, it was gone, but it was too late.

I had seen.

Gottcha.

The serpentine wolf-like man who held the world in the palm of his hands, the one I feared above all others, _didn't exist_. He was a mask.

But… why go to all the trouble of making the entire world hate him? It seemed contradictory. I was entranced, and in an instant, I knew I couldn't possibly ignore what I had noticed. I had to know what was in there, the Lelouch behind the mask. I wanted to meet him, to talk with him, to know him. An old proverb whispered through the corridors of my mind, something about inquisitive felines and death, but I ignored it.

Yep, I was hooked.

It was then that my cell phone rang. I glared at the number in irritation. Ryan's timing was really dreadful, and why did he call when he knew I hated talking cell phone to cell phone? He should have texted.

"Hello," I greeted him, trying to sound unruffled.

"Koneko," he gasped, "It's Jayden! Something terrible has happened to my little brother!"

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

I could say I did it for him, I suppose, but I'd be lying.

I did it because someone handed me Pandora's box, and if I had to use a diamond-edged blade to do it, that lid was COMIN' OFF!

Chapter 3) **Esther; I Sell Myself to the Evilest Man in the World!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Esther; I sell Myself to the Evilest Man in the World!**

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" I exclaimed heatedly, wondering who in their right mind arrests a _twelve-year-old_ for spilling a stupid soda. Luckily I didn't blurt out that second part, since it was probably the guy looking at me from across the table with a modicum of interest who was responsible.

"He managed to get it all over the feet of that new statue of the emperor, and the police saw and got really mad. You know how Jay is; he'll never apologize when you try and force it out of him, so he and the cops got into a shouting match and he lost his temper and took a swing at one of 'em." Ryan's voice was panicky and out of breath. I got the feeling that he was running and talking at the same time.

"Slow down," I cautioned. "Where is he now?" I was so aware of Lelouch and Suzaku's proximity to me and my conversation that it was like I could physically feel them staring at me. I had to keep on my toes and not say anything too specific that would get my friends in trouble.

"In county; I shadowed them on their way in. I'm on my way to Ryusuke's place now." I took care to keep my face impassive. Ryusuke was the guy Ryan knew who was connected to the rebellion. That meant that they were planning on breaking Jayden out of prison.

"And?" I prompted, hoping he didn't need the additional, "why are you telling _me_ about this?"

"I saw the lock on the fence and also the perimeter cameras," he replied.

"I see," I replied. He wanted me to tell him how to get through the security systems. All I would have to say was, "I left a note for you on the table," and my part would be done, but I wasn't too keen on officially aiding and abetting the rebellion while still alive, especially with the evil, (or not so evil) emperor within a meter and a half of me.

Wait, "not so evil?"

"Hold up on that, okay?" I requested, my lips forming the words of their own accord. "Give me," I paused, "48 hours. I might be able to do you one better, okay?" I crossed my fingers that he would understand. "But listen, if I don't get back to you by then, I left it on the table, okay?" I added hastily, still not a hundred percent certain that I would live to make it home.

"O…kay?" Ryan replied, obviously confused.

"Just give me two days," I pleaded, "I think I know someone who can help. Give me a little time to contact him and I'll get back to you. Can you do that?" I knew better than to say that I'd call him back in an hour. There was no way I had the guts to ask Lelouch right then and there! This sort of a request had to be phrased just exactly right, and I really couldn't say that I thought it would work anyway. I could have easily imagined the "chink in his mask," and that was my only basis for what I was planning.

"Fine," Ryan responded. "If you don't get back to me by then, the information I need is on your table, right?"

"That's right," I said, relieved that he got it, and hoping against hope that he would just think I was speaking in code because I was in public and not for any other reason.

"I'll talk to you later then," he replied, and abruptly hung up.

"Okay, I'll talk to you later," I told the incessant dial tone, and closed my phone, focusing on keeping my face normal.

I was gambling on the better nature of a man who had gone to the UFN conference, declared that he planned to destroy the world, and then proceeded to have them vote him in at gunpoint. Not only was I wagering my own life that he had another face behind his evil-overlord mask, I was making my bet on assumptions about his character that, beyond having no foundation in data, made absolutely no sense when compared with his behavior. I couldn't deny that it was a madcap thing to do, but I couldn't help but want to be right. I wanted this man, who was smart enough to outwit the world's greatest strategists, who had the skill to hold his own in complex debates, to be a good person. I connected to people with my brain primarily, loving my friends on an intellectual basis. I wanted to believe that he did the same, and that he was reasonable enough to listen to persuasion.

I was out of my mind. Then again, I had never claimed to be sane in the first place, so that was okay.

The two men were looking at me inquisitively, and I dropped my phone into my bag before making some comment about a friend needing a favor.

I was preoccupied for the rest of the evening, so much so that it wasn't until after I was several minutes down the road that I realized I was still alive and free and not even being followed that I could tell. Before parting from Lelouch and Suzaku in the parking lot, I made sure to gush about how much fun I had had and stressed that I wanted to do this again _soon_. Frankly, I was thinking _tomorrow_, but I was afraid to say that. Luckily for me, I didn't have to.

"To tell you the truth, there's a place not far from here that serves great omelets," the emperor suggested. "How does breakfast tomorrow sound?"

"Great!" I exclaimed. I was glad he had managed to hit on my favorite food: eggs. I wouldn't have to fake any enthusiasm for this one. I drove home rather slowly, and got honked at and passed a lot, but I thought best when my body was busy doing something like driving, and I was in no hurry to end up back home where I would have to clear a path to pace.

Should I play up Jayden's innocence? Should I threaten Lelouch with the rebel army? That was a dumb idea; he'd kill me, Jayden and them all in one fit of temper. This guy had to have a weakness somewhere, and I couldn't count on just his better nature to make him listen to me. I hoped Suzaku had a little influence over him, since he was clearly the nicer of the two.

By the time I was at home in bed I had run through a dozen possible conversations, all of which ended with him pulling a queen of hearts and shouting "off with their heads!"

The next morning, I beefed up my letter to Ryan with all the bits of information I had thought unnecessary before. Chances were high in favor of him needing to use it. I also made a pair of draft text messages, one saying, "They're going to release Jayden!" and the other, "It didn't work; go to my place and get the thing on the table ASAP, and good luck!" That way, I could alert him to my success or failure at the touch of a button, just in case anything went weird.

The weather was summery, but I was alternately cold and hot from stress, so I wore a black tank top and long pants with a crocheted sweater that I could shed or don as needed.

The first thing that went wrong was that I was late. Only by about a minute and a half, but I'm the girl who's fifteen minutes early for absolutely everything, and especially super important stuff like this.

The second thing that went wrong was that when I found Lelouch in the entryway of the restaurant, he was alone. Suzaku wasn't there, so my hopes that he would help to mellow his master were shattered.

In the car on the way there, I had come up with two plans; one: appeal to his better nature, and two: use the possibility of a publicity nightmare as leverage. I wasn't sure which one would work, if either, so I was trying to come up with possible angles to use as we were seated at the corner of the sunny terrace and served coffee and orange juice.

"Is something bothering you?"

Lelouch was staring at me over his drink, and I felt my heart rate rise; his mask had slipped again, and his eyes held a look of good-natured concern for a moment before he composed himself and they froze back over. I smiled a little, though what I really wanted to do was laugh in triumph. I hadn't imagined it the previous night.

"Yes, actually," I admitted, stirring my coffee contemplatively. "You see, I have to pose a suggestion to someone, and I have no idea how to phrase it so it will be well received. Perhaps you could help me?"

His eyes creased at the corners by a tiny fraction, and he folded his hands. I had his attention.

"Which do men respond more favorably to," I asked, "personal requests, or logical arguments?" He considered that for a moment and then smiled that cold, snaky, I'm-going-to-pretend-I'm-listening-but-really-I'm-just-waiting-to-crush-you smile.

"I'm afraid that's a bit too vague a question for me to answer," he replied politely. I shivered. I was back to being the mouse staring down the hawk.

"First of all, would you mind not doing that?" I requested coolly, leaning my cheek into my hand and resting my elbow on the table, looking as bored as I could manage. He raised his eyebrows.

"The creepy-aura thing," I clarified. "It's rather distracting."

His eyes betrayed him for a quarter of a second. He was startled, and maybe a little guilty? But then he somehow ramped up the intensity of his expression. I was a deer in the headlights. I was a baby bird in the coils of a serpent. This wouldn't do at all, so I looked back down at my coffee. 'I'm a fox,' I told myself. 'Not the biggest or the strongest or the hungriest thing out there, but give it enough time to plan and it can bring down a dragon. Calm down and think, Koneko. Do I talk to the Lelouch I'm looking at, or the one behind the mask?'

"If you have the wherewithal to say that," he commented, "then my 'creepy-aura thing' must not be very effective. But back to your query; I would say that it varies depending on the audience. Wouldn't you agree?" I smiled thinly.

"Then it would seem I may be in need of both angles, since from what I've seen so far, my audience consists of not one man, but two." _Stroke_ of _genius_!

"Two?" He was less off-guard than he had been before, but there was the slightest flicker of his expression. His brain was at work.

"The Lelouch I'm speaking to now," I responded carefully, "and the one behind his face, the one inside the mask."

"Inside the—"

"The trouble with wearing a mask that's so very different than your real face," I blurted out, heady with tempered fear and elation that came from the sudden, impulsive decision to act, "is that when it slips, the contrast is so stark that anyone with half an eye will notice it."

The evil aura mounted in intensity, but I knew that was because I had hit his weak point and told him something he didn't want to hear, so it didn't frighten me as much.

"So, to the Lelouch on the outside, I pose a simple choice. Tomorrow evening, one of two rumors is going to spread. The first: that the emperor's prisons are not, in fact, impregnable, and his staff is incompetent. The second: that in a random fit of mercy, emperor Lelouch set a single rather unimportant prisoner free, because his only crime was spilling a soda, and the government has more important things to do than beat up twelve-year-old boys. I leave it up to you which one it will be."

I had said it. My finger was on the [send] button for the "I have failed," message, and I felt taught like a rubber band that had been pulled to its limit.

Lelouch studied me for a few seconds, and a few more, and a minute, and then two. I only knew that only that long had passed and not hours because I kept glancing at my watch. He seemed to be deep in thought, and I was far too cowardly to interrupt him and demand an answer.

"Your request?" he finally prompted, though he did not sound particularly interested. "It's to the 'Lelouch inside,' or something, right?" I swallowed, but my mouth was drier than the street on a hot day. I took a swig of coffee before replying.

"A boy named Jayden was arrested last night for spilling his drink on a statue of you in the plaza by the governor's office building. He is a pre-teen, so of course he wouldn't apologize when some policemen came over to hassle him; he's a child! Children are stubborn! Still, disrespect of a stone likeness isn't really a good reason to lock a kid up! Please have him set free. His family is extremely worried."

"They requested that you convince me to do this?" he asked impassively. I shook my head.

"I volunteered, last night over the phone if you'll recall." I had said my piece and made my point as well as I could. Now that I had finished that part, anything that came next was so much less stressful that it wasn't really bad at all. In this state of mind, he could have asked me anything and I probably would have answered him truthfully.

"I see," he mused, "so you took a leaf out of Queen Esther's book, did you?"

My smile at that was genuine. Esther was the wife of Xerxes from the Christian Bible, who had broken protocol, putting herself in danger of execution, in order to save her people from destruction. In the end, however, she had not been able to come out with her request right away, instead inviting the king to dinner, and from that dinner to a second one, where she finally got up the nerve to talk to him. I had indeed acted like her, though she was not who I had been trying to emulate.

"Scheherazade, actually," I whispered, gazing intently at the menu in front of me. This entire conversation had so far taken place in the time it was taking the kitchen staff to make our food.

"Keeping me, the evil king, interested so I'll forget to kill you?" He replied with a full-bodied laugh. I glanced up and caught the mixture of offense and humor in his expression before he had a chance to hide it. I did not look back down, but scrutinized his face. Had he let his mask slip this time? He looked the same as he always did on TV right before he ordered some heavy tax or imposed an unreasonable law, but somehow it was like I could see through it, or was learning to anyway.

"You cannot deny that you've cast yourself in that role," I reminded him with a meaningful crease of my forehead. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table and his chin on the backs of his hands, eyes locked with mine. The deer-in-the-headlights sensation was back with a vengeance, or was it? I put my other hand up and assumed the same pose, maintaining the eye-contact with a boldness that was almost entirely put on. I say "almost," because I was growing marginally more confident. I was beginning to learn the language of his face, and even though I still didn't think my chances of survival were too high, it fascinated me to no end.

"One mushroom-cheese omelet," our server announced abruptly, "and one breakfast combo with extra sausage and no hash browns."

"No hash browns?" I exclaimed, munching on egg and mushrooms and cheese as happily as one could when served good food in the midst of a crisis. "Is something the matter with your tongue?"

"You dare to say that," he retorted smoothly, "even knowing that your life and the freedom of your friend are in my hands?"

"If you are the sort of person who would have people executed and imprisoned over an ordinary comment about how delicious hash browns are," I groused, "we're all already dead and nothing more I say can make things any worse." He laughed again, and I could hear the separate tones that composed it. There was an unnatural intensity there, which was probably what gave his laugh that cruel edge, but underlying that, there was something like surprise, or even admiration. Then suddenly they reverted to a calculating expression that made me rather concerned about the nature of the idea I was sure he had just had.

"You are a courageous woman, Monozuki Koneko," he finally declared, taking a sip of his drink before meticulously setting his glass back down on the table. "In light of the fact that you are interesting," he nodded at me, as though expressing some obvious trait, "and your conversation is stimulating," he nodded again, "I will free your friend."

Really?

He would?

Awesome!

Stimulating? Interesting? I was all over that! He expressed the sum total of my ambitions regarding my personality! I liked this guy!

"On one condition," he added, raising a hand to halt my little mental parade, which I'm sure was marching happily across my unguarded face.

Of course there was a condition. There was always a condition.

"All right, what is it?" I asked warily. He smirked.

"You amuse me, therefore I want to spend more time with you," he replied.

"Oka—" I started, but he cut me off.

"I will free your friend, on the condition that you marry me."

I blinked several times and took a drink of coffee.

"Could you repeat that last?" I asked quietly.

"I'm proposing," he explained calmly. He didn't look very much like a man ought to when asking for a woman's hand in marriage, but he appeared totally sincere. "If you agree to marry me, I will free your friend. That's the bargain."

I stared at him, hoping my eyes were smaller than the saucer-sized monstrosities they ought to have been, in proportion to my shock.

"Say something," he ordered after a long, awkward silence.

"That was random," I finally choked out and then, remembering who I was talking to, I amended myself. "One could also say that you have just now 'defined the paramount quintessence of the arbitrary human impulse,' but frankly I think 'random' is more efficient."

"How do you know I haven't been thinking this 'since the first moment I laid eyes on you,' like in the fairytales?" He challenged.

"I don't," I admitted. "Even now I'm having trouble figuring out if you're serious, though," I studied his eyes intently, "I'm inclined to think you are."

"Oh?" he responded, leaning further forward. I narrowed my eyes to slits and analyzed his expression once again. He did not interrupt me this time. He even relaxed his face a little, dropping his creepy aura considerably.

He was really good-looking; I had to admit it, even though it made me feel shallow to be evaluating a future spouse with "appearance" on my list of criteria. He was a walking enigma, thus ensuring that I'd never get bored. In fact, this might be the most exciting path my life could possibly take, when I thought about it. I was hooked on his mystery, and had already decided that come what may, I wanted to meet the man behind the face.

I'd miss my chance to become a black belt, but somehow I wasn't as focused on that as I should have been after dedicating how many years of my life to the study of Aikido. It was a frighteningly easy thing to think of giving up. My poor parents were going to flip if they heard that after dating so many perfectly nice guys, I was going to marry _him_ of all people. My brain was working so fast that I was surprised there wasn't an audible whirring or clicking, or smoke coming out of my ears.

He was going to release Jayden, so he was not without a reasonable amount of tolerance, but that didn't square up with his legal actions at all. What had been going through his head? I wanted to know. I had to know. I had a million questions, and the need for answers was like a physical hunger.

A hunger with the means to satisfy itself wrapping _himself up like a present and offering himself to me_! I was mad to think of refusing; it'd be like winning the lottery and giving back the money!

"I'll marry you," I announced, hoping my eyes didn't look too crazy as a result of what was going through my brain. He wanted to "spend time with me," I wanted to "spend time with him;" this was the perfect solution! I wondered, no, I hoped that he felt the same way about me, and that was why he was doing this.

"That was quick," he observed blandly. "Are you sure you don't want to take until tomorrow night to think about it?"

"Oh, quite sure," I retorted happily, munching on my omelet like my birthday had come early and there had been a thunderstorm to cap it off. Actually, this was better. 'Puzzle!' My brain sang.

"Excellent!" he exclaimed. Evil-overlord voice, I noted, was in contrast to a look of gratification and pleasure in his eyes. Not half an hour ago, I would have said it was just a mean, hungry look, but I was learning the language of his face a little at a time. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, hit a speed dial, and gave a few instructions to whoever was on the other end. The gist of it was that Jayden was to be set free and all charges against him dropped.

I took the opportunity while he was on the phone to send the "success" message to Ryan so he wouldn't jump the gun and get powerful information that I really didn't want anyone to have if it wasn't an emergency.

Breakfast was delicious, and Lelouch, beneath his triumphant-bad-guy impression, seemed genuinely delighted, and we had a great time, discussing the morality of the death penalty of all things! It was hard for me to argue a side, since I didn't actually know whether I supported or opposed it. I thought I opposed it, until he asked me if a certain terrorist from back in the homeland a few years ago had deserved death. I replied so strongly in the affirmative that it wasn't until afterwards that I realized I had just proven my own point wrong. Did I feel stupid? Oh yeah.

I was to move into the royal palace here in Japan later today. I only needed to bring what I would consider to have sentimental value, since all of my clothing, furniture and other accoutrements would be provided for. I didn't argue the point; moving didn't really bother me. It was like how I would go on a retreat to an onsen or a temple when I wanted to work seriously on my writing projects. I was just going to move to where I'd be closer to Lelouch, where I could learn more about him and get inside his head more conveniently.

I was running through a list of things I'd want to bring with me; the kimonos mom and I had bought together, and my collection of bunnies (the stuffed kind; my laptop was coming with as well, and it contained the "plot" kind.) I would drive my own car there, even though in all likelihood it would sit in a corner of the parking lot for the rest of its existence until it rusted into a pile of brown and green metal. I liked my car and I wasn't ready to give it up, cracked dashboard, rattling breaks and all.

It was as I pressed on these rattling breaks to park in the lot at my apartment building that I realized something was odd. Wasn't that my friend Sylvia's car parked all the way on the left? The one next to it was Ayame's I thought, beside Ichijo's and even Ryan's. Why were all my friends' cars in my lot?

I heard the music and voices from outside my door and was sorely tempted to turn around and drive straight over to the palace with nothing but the clothes on my back. In the end though, I had to go in, even though I was highly allergic to parties of all kinds, especially those thrown in my own home. If Ryan's car was in the lot, it meant he had probably brought Jayden with him, and I wanted to see with my own eyes that the kid was okay. That and I really did need my stuff. I wasn't leaving my laptop behind; my life's work was on it!

I steeled myself, slipped through the door while holding it as far closed as I physically could, and tried to look inconspicuous as I skirted around people dancing and drinking and talking, and trying to ignore the giant banner that said "Congratulations on your graduation, Koneko!" and the one beneath it reading, "Welcome home, jail-bird Jayden!"

I successfully navigated my way through the crowd of people who had mashed themselves into my apartment and into my bedroom where the clutter on the floor was knee to thigh deep, probably because whoever had set up the party had thrown all the junk from the other room into here in an attempt to "clean." After wading through it all—and contemplating how superfluous it all was, since I was leaving the majority of it behind with almost no regret—I managed to pack a backpack with my kimonos, bunnies, laptop, sunglasses, and a few other odds and ends. I changed back into my little black dress and sandals since, besides one many-layered formal kimono, it was the nicest thing I had. I didn't really want to walk into the imperial palace in what I was wearing.

I opened the door to the squeal of my friend Natsumi, who of course managed to draw the attention of everyone in the room by its high pitch and volume.

After that, I had to endure many congratulations and many attempts to get me to dance. I cannotdance; not in the modern style anyway. My waltz is perfectly fine, at least enough to get me through the slow dancing numbers at my middle school dances back in Britannia where we actually _had_ dances. Extricating myself from the well-wishers took ages, though it was probably only a few minutes, and I accomplished it by re-routing all attention back to the "welcome home Jayden" theme.

Ryan hugged me when he saw me, and I ruffled Jay's hair, knowing that it would be the pinnacle of degradation for him to be hugged by a woman as old as I must appear to him. He had a bruise on his cheek near his ear, but other than that, he did not look too much the worse for wear. I was glad about that; it somehow lent credibility to Lelouch's bargain. It actually took me until then to remember that the reason why I had ended up engaged to the evil emperor of the world was because it had been a condition in the kid's release. I was so caught up in my own reasons for agreeing to it that, I am ashamed to admit, I had totally forgotten that Jay's future hung on my decision.

Either way, he was free, and I was on my way back to the safety of my car, and I had a very bright future mapped out ahead of me as far as I could see, so I didn't worry too much about my motives. I cranked up the music as high as I could get it as I drove along, and for a while I just lost myself in the pleasure of the wind on my face. It wasn't until I could see the white walls of the palace in the distance that I started to try and get my head around everything that had just happened.

It was so hard to get my mind around the concept that only a few hours previously, I had left my place fearing I would never return. I had been half strategizing on how to get Jayden out, and half working on contingency plans, even to leaving…

Leaving that note for Ryan.

The one I left on the table.

Assuming he wouldn't go to my apartment unless he received news of my failure.

Have I overused the word "uh-oh," yet?

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

You know what they say about assumptions, right? I hope you do, because I don't plan on repeating it.

My assumptions about Ryan were all wrong. I hope at least I have Lelouch pegged right.

Otherwise, married life could potentially suck.

Chapter 4) **Royal Palace; Life Just Gets Weirder and Weirder!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I'd like to state this _categorically_ and _for the record_, to save people the time of pointing it out: Koneko Monozuki is based off of me and my name is Mary-Sue. Thank you for your attention. :) **

**Royal Palace; Life Just Gets Weirder and Weirder!**

I was up a creek without a paddle this time. I drove down the road back towards my place (my old place, I reminded myself) hoping that as the soon-to-be-Empress, I got diplomatic immunity applicable to traffic laws. That had never stopped me from driving like a maniac before of course.

I knew it wouldn't do any good.

By the time I arrived back there, it would have been two hours. It was almost noon already, and Ryan and Jayden had probably gone straight there from county to hang up that second banner and everything. If he had the letter, he was long gone. I could only pray that whoever had "cleaned" threw it in my room with everything else they deemed to be in the way.

I called Ryan three times, but he didn't pick up. I left him a message the third time saying that I had lost something, and wanted to know who had cleaned up my apartment so that I could find it. At a quarter to one I skidded into my parking spot and took the stairs to my floor as fast as I could run, using both my hands and feet. I could never ride in elevators when I was in a hurry.

I fumbled with the key in my haste, dropping it twice and getting the teeth stuck on the outside of the lock before finally ramming it in and turning it.

"Break into one of the most secured buildings in the world," I hissed aloud as I forced the door open, "no problem, but get into my own apartment? I guess that's asking too much! Yeesh…"

The place was deserted by now. People had cleaned up after themselves to an extent; my trash cans were full, and all of the dishes were piled up where they were supposed to be. Other than that, it was as messy if not more so than usual. If the letter was here, chances were it was buried under a mountain of clutter.

I was about to start throwing things around in a panic of searching when there was a knock from behind me. I whirled to face Suzaku, standing in the open doorway with his sunglasses in his hand and a perplexed expression on his face.

"I've lost something," I explained vaguely, hoping he'd go away.

"I see," he replied, navigating his way across the sea of junk to enter my living room. "Is it something you want to take with you?"

"Heard about that, have you?" I commented with a grin. "But to be honest, it's a letter I would like to burn. It was only supposed to reach its intended recipient if Lelouch refused to grant my request or if I was killed or something. The trouble is, most of the people I know were just here throwing a surprise party for my high school graduation. That means that if it's not still here, it was taken by the guy I meant to send it to, and if he has it he's probably read it by now, which is… kind of a pain in the butt." I finished lamely.

"What does it look like?" Suzaku asked, putting his sunglasses into his jacket pocket.

"It's in a large manila envelope, and it's stuffed full of paper, so it's heavy. It's addressed to "my friend and his brother," in Britannian and kanji. Why?"

"I'll start here in the living room," he offered, "and you should start going through your bedroom. If you put away everything you look under, we'll find it in no time and get your apartment ready to be closed up while we're at it." I didn't bother to remind him that knights didn't usually help clean up after parties. He was back in his Mr. Helpful-friendly-nice-guy mode, and I was in no hurry for him to snap out of it. So I took a steadying breath, let it out slowly, and slid open my bedroom door.

Three hours later, my apartment looked like my mother lived there—which was to say, _clean_. Suzaku was doing the dishes with his sleeves rolled up, I was folding up a bunch of my clothes that I had never gotten around to schlepping over to the local thrift shop, and we were still missing one manila envelope full of classified information.

"There's always the possibility that he won't do anything dumb about it," I thought aloud, knowing as I said the words that they were false. Ryan's family was very deep into the opposition of Emperor Lelouch's rule, at least as far as the civil sector was concerned. With those papers in his possession and absolutely no original thought in his head, there was only one thing he was even going to consider doing; hand over the documents to some rebel leader in hopes of being given a high-ranking position in their army. I sighed in exasperation. "Oh, who am I kidding anyway? Hey Suzaku?"

He looked over in response to my irritated drawl.

"Are you the head of imperial security, or is that somebody else's job?"

"Orange Boy and I sort of share it," he replied, "but technically it's mine. Why?"

"Who's Orange Boy?" I asked, distracted.

"Jeremiah Gotwald," he answered shortly. "It's his nickname. I repeat, why?"

"Because," I enunciated slowly, "that envelope that we can't seem to find is probably on its merry little way to the rebel headquarters right now. It contains all kinds of information on how to get around your security programs, and its in the hands of one of many, many, many, many people out there who want you, the Emperor, 'Orange Boy,' and a whole lot of other people on your side dead." I winced as one of my plates clunked loudly to the bottom of the sink, thanking fate that I had bought my dishes cheap and still hoping that it hadn't broken.

"Why didn't you say that earlier?" he demanded roughly, fumbling for his phone with soapy dish water dripping from his elbows. His tone didn't really match the comical scene he was making, and I was hard-pressed to take seriously the fact that I was probably more of a criminal now than I had ever been before.

"I wasn't too keen on admitting to it, if you must know," I responded with the most withering look I could muster. He snarled wordlessly as he punched numbers into his phone.

While Suzaku called people and barked orders, I finished filling up my donation bags in relative silence. I still had a fair amount of clothing left that I still wore, and even though I knew I wasn't coming back here, I somehow didn't want to pack it up with the rest. I wondered how much of it I could fit into my car.

"Why would you leave something like that lying around?" Suzaku was apparently done on the phone, because he was looking at me with an expression of extreme disapproval on his face.

"Why did you instantly believe me when I told you about it?" I countered. He rolled his eyes.

"I have more than enough experience reading lies in people's faces," he retorted.

"You mean, in Emperor Lelouch's face?" I guessed with a grin. So I wasn't the only one who was aware that there was more to the man than his façade. I wondered just how much Suzaku knew about him, but he spoke before I could derail the conversation.

"Why was the information lying around?" He snapped.

"Because I didn't know if the Emperor was going to release Jayden just because I asked him too," I retorted hotly. "As I'll bet you're aware, I asked for his release this morning when the Emperor and I went out for that breakfast you were unable to attend." He nodded.

"Yes, I heard. I was a few tables over, keeping an eye on you." I passed over all of the "paranoid" and "stalker" remarks I could make on that.

"Well then, you remember my time limit? I told Ryan last night that the information he needed to break Jay out of jail was on my table and if he ended up needing it to come and get it." Suzaku nodded silently once more. "I wasn't planning on him being here at a party!" I explained. "Jayden was released, so he was never supposed to get the letter! But he did, which is—"

"A problem," he finished for me. It was my turn to nod. "Well, there's nothing more that can be done about it now. The secret police will see what they can see, and until we receive their report, we're going into this blind. Out of interest, how exactly did you get your hands on that information?"

"I like to poke my nose where it isn't wanted," I snapped. "Why are you asking me this, Kururugi? Don't tell me you haven't managed to connect 'Monozuki Koneko' with 'Monozuki Safeguard' yet. It's hopelessly obvious." He smirked.

"I had wondered if it was information that extended to companies outside your father's, actually."

"It did," I explained, not really sure why I was being so free with information all of a sudden. "I included mostly generic stuff, like how-to's for your typical measures; how to get past a motion-sensitive camera, what the right bearing sounds like on a twist code lock, etc..."

"I see," he mused. "So in other words, we are now totally dependant on human guards."

"That's basically it," I agreed sheepishly. "Seriously, I didn't intend for him to get it if he didn't absolutely need it."

"Tell it to His Majesty," he snapped, and ushered me irritably from the premises, completely ignoring the fact that I had still got quite a lot of stuff stored in a place that would no longer be mine next month when I ceased to make payments on it. Oh well, more work for the landlord's staff to haul it to the dumpster.

Lelouch didn't seem particularly bothered when I told him the story. He commended me on having a contingency plan in place, but pronounced it as sloppily executed. That riled me a bit, which counteracted the guilt quite effectively and put me in a reasonably good mood as a pair of girls in pink maid outfits showed me around a suite of rooms three times the size of my old apartment.

The bed had sheer curtains and silk sheets with a down coverlet. The carpet was thick and expensive, and there was a wide window that took up most of the far wall, with a balcony outside and a garden below. The room also had a refrigerator and freezer for snacks and drinks. The bathroom had a big pool-like bathtub with a fountain in the middle that spewed water gently into the tub from several carved orifices.

My closet was bigger than my old bedroom and there was so much clothing in there that I was shocked. Maid number one, who had bluish-black hair in a bun, told me that it and the rooms had all been prepared yesterday. So Lelouch had either counted on me saying yes, or planned on having someone else if I said no. That, or he didn't mind going to a lot of trouble—and expense, I amended as I fingered the bejeweled fabric of one dress—for nothing.

There was a lot of formalwear, and most of it was princessy-looking gowns, but there were a few pairs of jeans and several ordinary shirts too. I didn't mind the ball gowns though; in fact I rather liked stuff like that. When maid number two, the one with the short red pigtails at the nape of her neck, noticed me eyeing one in particular, they both ganged up on me and rather forcibly helped me change into it. I twirled around in front of a mirror, admiring how the electric blue satin and white lace complimented my light skin. I looked best in pink or black, but blue wasn't half bad.

There wasn't anything interesting that could be done with my hair, but maid number two had me sit in a chair while she painstakingly pinned on a thin silver circlet that was open in the back so that different veils could be attached to it. The one they clipped onto me this time was blue lace to match the dress. I was confronted by a sudden vision of myself in the same getup, only all white for my wedding. It looked weird. Something was wrong with the picture, but I couldn't put my finger on it, so I stopped trying.

When I came down to dinner, I found Lelouch, Suzaku, and Jeremiah—or "Orange," apparently—already there, deep in conversation about something, but they stopped when I came in. Suzaku had changed into his blue and white knight uniform with the translucent shoulders, and he still looked miffed. Something told me it was connected to all the extra hours he was going to have to put in because of my mess-up, so I didn't try to razz him about what a good granite impression he was doing.

Dinner was exceedingly strange, since even in the homeland my family had eaten mostly Asian food. Seeing a multiple-course gourmet Britannian meal was a bit of a paradigm shift, but I got through it alright, and it was actually pretty good. I especially liked the tomato bisque, and that was coming from someone who liked neither tomatoes nor soup to begin with. There wasn't much conversation. Suzaku was in a foul mood, and Lelouch looked preoccupied. Orange and I exchanged pleasantries; he said that as a future member of the royal family, he was very much at my service, and hoped I would come to rely on him. He wasn't very interesting.

Lelouch did mention at one point that he had scheduled the date of our wedding for some six months hence, and that until then I should enjoy my stay and feel free to consider his home my own. I replied that I would happily do so, in fact, if there was anywhere he didn't want me to go, he had better cement the door shut, as it was the most expedient means of preventing my passage short of flooding the adjacent hallway. He snickered when I said that, but his evil-aura was too intense for it to sound quite right. I wondered if he was worried about something, since somehow he seemed to be putting up his usual barriers with a degree of absentmindedness.

I slept well that night, much better than I ought to have done in an unfamiliar bed in the home of someone who was really little more than a stranger. My maids came in at seven the next morning, and to my confusion, proceeded to help me bathe and dress and put makeup on before breakfast. In my mind, breakfast conjured up an image of me in a bathrobe, half asleep with bed-head and only enough functioning brain cells to operate the coffee maker. Getting ready for breakfast was just about unthinkable. Even yesterday, I had gotten up and had coffee and one piece of toast before leaving to meet Lelouch.

Washed, brushed, pressed and dressed with a thin layer of makeup on my face, I was shown back to the dining room where a large television mounted to the wall was showing the seven-thirty news. Suzaku was the only one at the table, and when I asked him about the others, he explained—in a slightly warmer voice than he had used the previous day, thank goodness—that Orange Boy ate early and left for his duties before six, and Lelouch was always late for breakfast.

There was no toast or peanut butter in sight as maids began to bring in the food, though thankfully there was coffee, with a wide range of creamers to chose from. There were several egg dishes, and a lot of fruit cut into geometric shapes, and pastries set on little white paper doilies. It was very delicious, but I really hoped they'd have toast tomorrow. I didn't like my morning routine interrupted too often.

I looked up at Suzaku to ask whether the kitchen took specialty orders, but his eyes were riveted on the television screen. I glanced over at it and froze. There were five people standing in front of an ordinary white wall, four of which had guns trained on the camera, probably for dramatic effect unless the cameraman was being coerced.

The man in the middle held no gun; he was waving a sword in the air as he made some speech about how he would topple the traitor Lelouch's empire and end his reign of the people's suffering if it cost him his own life to do it. He sounded passionate, but there was a rough edge to his voice, like he was suppressing a cough.

"Li Xingke! So they broke him out, did they?" Suzaku exclaimed.

"He was in prison?" I queried, thinking I remembered him from some reports about the Chinese Federation, and later the UFN commencement. "Isn't he the guy who's always holding the little Empress's hand or something?" Suzaku inclined his head in affirmation.

"We captured him when he and a group of others tried to break the UFN delegates out of the dungeon," he explained quietly. "He was being held in a maximum security prison some twenty kilometers away. How on earth did they…?"

"That's how," I answered his unfinished question as, with a sinking heart, I pointed to the gun man all the way on the left of the TV screen.

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

This was to be expected, really. I'd sort of had it coming for a long time. That doesn't make it less annoying.

It ought to make it less surprising though…

Chapter 5)** Confession; How to Break Up With Someone You Weren't Dating in the First Place!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Confession; How to Break Up with Someone you weren't Dating in the First Place!**

Do I even need to say that it was Ryan? After a couple of failed attempts, I managed to shove my benumbed fingers into my dress pocket, retrieve my phone and dial his number. It didn't even ring before I got his answering machine telling me to leave a message, which I declined to do, snapping my phone shut and then opening it again to do the smart thing I should've done in the first place.

Jayden answered the family landline after only one ring, and for a moment I was too shocked to say anything as I heard a faint sound of a telephone ringing from the television's sound system. They were at Ryan's _house_?

"Hey kiddo, it's Koneko," I breathed. Do me a favor and call your brother, will you? His phone's off, but your ringtone will override it and force it to power back on, right?"

"That's right," he replied quietly, "but he's at home. I'll have him call you back, shall I? There's something pretty important going on right about now."

"Yeah, no kidding," I grumbled. "I'm looking at him on global television. Just have him call me as soon as the broadcast is over, okay?" Jayden agreed to pass on the message and hung up just as the doors opened and Lelouch strode in, dressed in his white imperial robes. He glanced at the television and then turned to Suzaku. I assumed he had watched the beginning of the show from his bedroom or wherever he hung out in the mornings that made him late for breakfast.

"It seems we shall have to move things along a bit faster than I intended," he announced. "Prepare to commence the next phase of our operation. As for you," he added, looking at me, "perhaps you could take this opportunity to learn your way around. I seem to recall that you wanted to explore, correct?" I frowned, but nodded. I was burning with curiosity to know what operation was entering what phase, what it had to do with this Li Xingke character and Ryan, how I had helped or hindered each side, and above all who was going to win. Still, I didn't really fancy running around dodging bullets to find out. Those might hurt, after all.

"I'll want to hear the story when you get back," I requested with a half smile. He looked at me, and the evil aura receded for a moment to be temporarily replaced by something like fondness; the expression of a person who is leaving the house knowing that their new cat will be waiting for them when they return. I didn't mind if he was really thinking something like that, since pets can wander around and not get in trouble for going places where they shouldn't.

The boys, as I was beginning to think of them, left a few minutes later; Lelouch in his big airborne command center and Suzaku in Lancelot Albion. I did indeed explore, going through the kitchens and the office areas and the gardens. The palace was made up of two different buildings, though they had underground passages connecting them as well as enclosed bridges with glass walls that let you look down from your level at the sprawling grounds below. The building in the front near the main gate, the one people would see when they first entered was for offices and such places. It was the place where councils would be held and government procedures set down, and it was the one with the Britannian emblem painted on each of its four marble walls.

The building behind it wasn't as tall or imposing as its brother. It contained the kitchens, living spaces, library, and things like that. It was there that I lived, down the hall from Lelouch and one flight of stairs away from Suzaku. I didn't know where Orange Boy slept, or if he did sleep for that matter, and I didn't ask. He didn't interest me enough. It was as I crossed one of the connecting bridges to return to the residential pert of the palace that my phone finally vibrated.

"Ryan?" I asked, hitting "accept" without even looking at caller ID.

"I'm here," he answered breathlessly. "I called as soon as Jay told me. What's wrong?" I was about to answer, but my attention was diverted by a flash of light in the distance. Hoping that it was a thunderstorm coming in, I turned to face it and almost dropped my phone.

I could see the battle from my altitude, and even from a distance where the knightmare frames were the size of gnats flying around Mt. Fuji, it was horrific. I could see the blinding orbs of destruction as what I judged to be F.L.E.I.J.A. warheads detonated, accompanied by the smaller dots of light as machines were destroyed by more conventional weapons. I loved stuff like this in the movies, but knowing that it was happening in real life only a few miles away was utterly repulsive.

My friend was one of those dots.

"Ryan," I snarled quietly.

"Yes? What is it?" he asked.

"STOP BLOWING THINGS UP!" I bellowed, hoping I could burst one of his eardrums.

"Whoa, what?" he exclaimed, sounding like his mouth was suddenly very far away from the receiver.

"I said, stop blowing things up!" I repeated angrily. "I can see you from here! Are those F.L.E.I.J.A. missiles? Using a reprehensible weapon like that; what are you and that Xingke nut-job thinking? Do you want to kill yourselves along with the Emperor?"

"No!" he shouted over the noise of another explosion. A few seconds later, I heard it through the glass, and my eyes widened in shock as Mt. Fuji erupted in a massive fount of red-gold destruction. "We're not the ones firing them! Prince Schniezel is the one setting them off. He's temporarily in command of the Black Knights; that's who I joined up with! Listen, that info you sent me? It was a godsend! It got me a decently ranked position right off the bat, and then when we found out that my martial arts skills translated well into knightmare piloting, I got to fly my own machine! Isn't that great?"

He expected me to be happy for him, to congratulate him; I could hear it in his voice.

"Ryan," I seethed, trying very hard not to keep shouting. "You were only supposed to get that if the Emperor refused to release Jayden. I didn't mean for you to go and do something like this!"

"But I, wait, the _Emperor_? _That_ was the guy you thought might help? Are you kidding me?"

"I kid you not," I replied evenly.

"Seriously? What did you do, axe-kick him through a wall? Why didn't you finish the job? Then Jayden would've been set free along with the world!"

"Actually," I hissed, "if you must know, I asked _nicely_. He's not unreasonable you know. If you put things in logical terms, he'll come around eventually."

"You talk like you know him," Ryan accused. "What's he doing listening to you anyway? When did you talk to him about this?"

"When you called to tell me about Jayden, we were out having dinner together," I informed him icily.

"WHAT?" he exclaimed, and then, "Hold on." After that, he was obviously fighting someone, because all I heard were grunts of exertion and cries of 'down you go, you mindless drone!' It was some time before he was able to talk to me again, and when he did, it was interspersed with heavy breathing and the occasional gunshot.

"Are you in your mech?" I asked, wondering if it was the handless radio in a knightmare frame that he was using to take a call during a battle. The number was coming up as "blocked" on my phone.

"Yeah," he replied shortly, gasping for air. "But what were you doing out for dinner with the Emperor?"

"If you must know," I said quietly, "we're engaged."

The only thing I heard on the other end was battle white-noise for some time.

"Ryan?" I prodded, wondering if we had been disconnected.

"En… engaged?" he croaked.

"Uh-huh," I affirmed. "That's right." I left out the part about Jayden's release being contingent on my answer. If I had been opposed to the idea, I would've refused Lelouch's proposal and we would've broken Jay out the old fashioned way. I didn't want Ryan to get the idea that he needed to come rescue me or anything.

"As in, you're going to…" He trailed off.

"Be married, yes," I finished for him. "Don't you get it? He's like a walking, talking Pandora's Box! You know I can't resist that. Ryan, are you there?"

"I'm here," he snapped, "and I get it."

"You do?" I exclaimed happily.

"You're sick, you know that?" he spat, and I caught my breath. "You think of relationships as a hobby; of people as your playthings! You don't really care about anything or anyone, do you? I'm doing something to support a cause I believe in! I'm making a difference with my life, and if I have to give that life up, so be it!"

My heart was pounding irregularly, and I felt faint and light-headed. I swayed and my back encountered the glass wall, which I gratefully slid down, preferring that to falling over.

"You have no heart, do you? How can you stand there and tell me that? You're engaged to him? You're going to give yourself to that beast? For what? Money? Power? Fame? No, I know you better. Too well, actually. You don't care about any of that. You just want to un-riddle him or something like that, right Koneko? Your insatiable longing for stuff like this has stolen away your humanity and left you as nothing but an empty shell! You're not even worthy to be called a woman anymore!

You have no heart; you're not human!

People are being killed in his battles, sitting on death row in his prisons, and suffering under his reign! He just made a volcano erupt, costing thousands of soldiers on both sides their lives! How can you disregard what he's done? You never cared about anyone to begin with! You may as well be dead! I wish you had died before we even met! Well, perhaps not. It's due to your informative letter that I was able to attain such a high position in the rebel forces, and I am grateful for that.

But I'm ashamed, Koneko; ashamed to have ever been called your friend!

I'm ashamed that I ever loved you!"

I ignored his last comment. I had long been aware of his dumb crush, and had hoped he had grown out of it by now, though I suppose that for him, this was a grueling confession. I was more preoccupied with his views on my emotional state.

"So," I began slowly, "do you suppose that means I'm incapable of real love?" I had long wondered this; wondered if I hid behind my "I love with my brain" thing as a shield to keep the truth at bay. "Am I a monster, do you think?"

"I do!" he exclaimed hotly.

"I see," I replied, surprised at how harsh my voice sounded, though I meant to be talking at an ordinary conversational level. "Well, goodbye then, I guess."

I didn't give him a chance to say anything or hang up on me, I just snapped my phone shut, hit "end," and then turned the fool thing off for good measure. I couldn't say if I was upset about losing Ryan. I ought to have been; he was the first friend I made when I moved to Japan to live on campus at the academy. This was mostly due to the fact that he was the first person (besides the teaching staff) I had met who spoke fluent Britannian. After stumbling through my first few days of only speaking Japanese and having to ask endlessly for people to speak more slowly and repeat themselves, talking to him was like water to a parched tongue, even though he really didn't have anything interesting to say.

He had brought me to his dojo and introduced me to the Sensei and his fellow students when I told him I had once done martial arts, and after much cajoling and debating, I finally joined them as a member. Martial arts and language were all we had in common though, and as we grew apart, I could see him not trying to salvage our fading relationship, but attempting to turn it into something completely different with things like movies and long walks in the park. He had become stifling in that respect and I often made up errands or chores to escape from him. Still, he was the best martial artist at our dojo besides the three Sensei, and I at least enjoyed doing that with him.

What really bothered me was what he had said about me, about how I thought of relationships and people. He wasn't just right; he had hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head so hard that he drove it straight through the proverbial bull's-eye. I was agreeing to get married because I was curious about the man behind the mask known as the cruelest, most sinful, vile scum in the world! That _was_ actually kind of sick, now that I thought about it.

I don't know how long I sat there; a few hours at least, because the sun rose to its zenith as I thought. What did Lelouch think my motivation was? Was he under the impression that I had some affection for him? Did he think I was just shallow?

While we're on the subject, what the heck was _his_ motivation to propose in the first place?

"Koneko?"

"Speak of the devil," I greeted my aforementioned fiancé as he swept into the glass catwalk, still wearing his white robe, but missing his cloak and matching hat. He smiled lopsidedly. At least he knew who I was calling the devil.

"I have a serious question to ask you," I informed him, slipping my powered-off phone into my pocket.

"Oh dear," he exclaimed in mock concern. "Are we going to have our first lovers' spat, then?"

"I'm afraid that isn't on my schedule for today," I replied coolly, "so if it's on yours, it would seem we have a conflict of interests."

Lelouch walked past me and leaned against the opposite glass wall, pressing the tips of his fingers together contemplatively.

"You have my absolute and uninhibited attention," he said, sounding almost a little sincere.

"Would you mind," I requested hesitantly, "telling me _why_ _exactly_ you proposed to me, as a condition to Jayden's freedom?"

"What if I took this opportunity to look pointedly at your chest," he reasoned, "and gave a suggestive wink?"

"I guess that'd be an acceptable answer," I grumbled, pulling a disgusted face. "Seriously thought, perversion is so boring. I'd hate to think I'd misjudged you." He laughed. I was getting to like his laugh, maybe because every time I heard it, I detected less of the malicious tone and more of the raw amusement and amazement that his voice held. Whether this was because he was letting his guard down around me or I was getting better at reading him was still a mystery.

"Why the sudden interest?" he prompted. "You didn't ask back at the restaurant before you agreed; why bother with it now?"

"Well," I started, and then halted, not really knowing how to phrase a succinct explanation. As I thought about the best way to say it, I looked up at Lelouch who, as usual when I snuck a peek at him, had let his mask slip a little. He was stressed and upset about something, and very, very sad.

"What's wrong?" I asked, forgetting for a moment that I was supposed to be the one answering the questions. He snapped a lookdown at me, and for once, he didn't hike his façade back up right away.

"It's just been a long day," he finally answered.

"You know things are bad when you say that at noon," I commented with a lame attempt to lighten the mood.

"But back to your issue," he hinted, composing his face. It didn't matter, of course. His eyes were probably supposed to look scary, but I could still see the different emotions dancing around behind them.

"It's just, someone told me some stuff about myself that I really didn't want to hear," I admitted.

"Your rebel friend?" he asked. I nodded.

"Did you capture him, by the way?" I questioned on a whim. He denied it with the slightest shake of his head. "Well, I guess what's bothering me it that he said I'm incapable of love, and I'm worried that he might be right, so I was just wondering what… what you…"

"What I expect from you?" he finished for me. I looked expectantly up at him.

"You're interesting to talk to," he replied, and after a careful study of his eyes, I decided I believed him. "I get very bored with only Suzaku the muscle-head and Orange Boy the lapdog to talk to, and I wanted to spend some quality time with you because of that. Is that not a reasonable expectation?" My eyes widened. He had asked me for the very same reason that I had accepted!

"No!" I exclaimed, standing up. "That's perfect! Actually, I feel the same. You're so much more complicated than anyone else I know; I wanted to have a good excuse to spend time getting to know you! I was just worried you might expect for us to have some kind of deep connection or something like that." He laughed. I could tell from the degree of strain that he was still having a very bad day, but at least he was amused.

"Then we make a good match," he announced, "since I rather feared the same. Oh," here he composed himself and looked at me very solemnly. "By the way, I regret to inform you that Suzaku was killed in the attack." I strode up to him and glared pointedly into his face, searching for an explanation that I knew wasn't forthcoming.

"You're lying, aren't you," I accused quietly. He was only briefly surprised before glaring down at me and bringing his creepy-aura level up until if I had not known him better, I would have knelt down and cowered at his feet. Unfortunately for him, I did know him better.

"Careful," he cautioned softly, with a lethal edge to his silky voice. "I seem to remember a certain proverb about felines snooping and death." I grinned.

"Come on, nobody believes that stuff anymore," I snickered, though in truth, he had managed to scare me a bit this time. He did not reply to that, instead choosing to stride away down the hall toward the back building.

I followed him after a moment, still trying to dissect what I had seen in his eyes. Something had seriously rattled him, but I couldn't know what.

As I entered the building, I passed a woman going the other way. She had long green hair, and was dragging a suitcase behind her, with a yellow plushie under one arm. She didn't look at me as I walked by her, and I did not look too closely at her either.

She probably wasn't anyone important.

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

A journey of exploration leads to a monumental discovery, and I make a pact in my own heart to fulfill what I set out to do.

But before I begin, I have one thing to say.

Lelouch, you're really, really bad at making up passwords, y'know that?

Chapter 6) **Dungeon; Is it Really Necessary to Keep Them in Your Basement?**


	7. Chapter 7

**Dungeon; Is it Really Necessary to Keep them in your Basement?**

"Your Majesty," Orange reported as he knelt in front of the throne in Lelouch's audience room in the front building of the palace, "all mission objectives have now been completed. The deserters, as well as the rebel leaders have been apprehended, and we have recaptured all of the UFN delegates who were use as bait. In addition, Princess Nunnaly Vi Britannia has been taken into our custody, and is being detained in the blue rooms on the lower level of the rear palace, as your Highness instructed.

Unfortunately, a few of the Black Knights and their supporters still elude us." Here, Orange paused for a moment and looked up at me, where I sat on an ornate chair beside Lelouch's throne. "According to our intelligence reports, your acquaintance Ryan Lance is currently their acting commander. Baroness Viletta Nu and Princess Cornelia are also among those who have evaded our net, but we are confident that they will make some attempt to release their comrades, at which time we will have them by the throats. Also, C.C. is missing. That is all."

Lelouch fingered his chin thoughtfully.

"I see," he replied. "Well done, Jeremiah. Continue your work on rounding up the remnants of the black knight leaders, but leave C.C. to her own devices. She is no longer of any concern to our current objectives. You may go."

Orange saluted and marched out of the room, leaving me alone with Lelouch and, inexplicably, Schniezel, who had a very blank expression on his face. Noticing my interest, Lelouch stood up and curtly told the tall blonde man to leave, which he immediately did after saluting as Orange had done, and with a similar look of loyal obedience.

"I thought you and your brother were enemies," I commented. "Ryan said he was launching F.L.E.I.J.A.s in that battle, right?" Lelouch winced.

"Not exactly," he murmured, and then fell silent. I waited a few minutes for him to speak, but all he did was type on the laptop computer he had pulled from its holder on the side of his throne.

"Um," I began, "if I remember my royal genealogy right, don't you and Princess Nunnaly share a mother as well as a father?"

"What of it," he snapped, "considering I obliterated both of them?" I couldn't help but gasp.

"S-seriously?" I stammered. He glared at me, bobbed his head once, and turned back to whatever he was working on. Apparently, thanks to our conversation in the hallway yesterday, he was no longer trying to hide his foul mood from me.

"What's going on?" I asked softly. "You look like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point."

"Nunnaly," he murmured, and then trailed off. "She and I used to be… very close. I don't really like having her as… as my prisoner, if you must know; as my enemy."

"You kind of had it coming though," I reminded him. "Interpersonal relationships aside, your politics and hers just don't mesh very well, at least from what I knew of her during her time as Viceroy." His gaze was stony as he met my eyes. He knew that. "I'm just saying what I see," I sighed, raising my hands in a gesture of surrender.

He turned back to his computer screen, and I stood and flounced out of the room with no particular destination in mind. Even though his mask was dropped, I still couldn't find his motivation. If he was so upset that his little sister was his enemy, why didn't he just quit being evil and make up with her? it didn't make sense, and somehow I had trouble believing that he was just the nasty sort of person who oppressed people for fun, though he did a fair impression of it.

I wandered back into the residential palace and just kept looking for stairs going down, wanting to know how many basement levels the building had. The kitchen was on the first level, the laundry on the second, and the storage facility for all of the record books that didn't fit into the library was on the third. From the quantity of dust and cobwebs all over everything, I assumed that it was the bottom level, but when I heard footsteps coming down a hallway, I ducked inside a room and peered around the door, which I left slightly ajar, to watch a pair of masked security goons march down the corridor like sentries.

As I waited for them to pass far enough away that I could safely duck out and find the stairs back up, I turned to examine the room, and was shocked to find that it was not, as I had thought, a storage space. It was entirely made of metal except for the carpeting, and there was a button panel by the door, almost like…

Like an elevator.

Bingo.

I shut the door properly and the mechanism hummed to life, sliding metal grille elevator doors out of the wall to close me off from the ordinary wood-paneled door. The panel had two sets of buttons; a vertical line of round ones that looked like they belonged to an ordinary elevator, and a keypad with a little screen above it that reminded me very strongly of the machine used to input debit card pin numbers at the supermarket.

"If I were Lelouch," I murmured aloud, "what would my password be? Let's try 'Nunnaly.'" The minute my finger came in contact with the first key I knew I had messed up big time, because if these buttons weren't fingerprint sensitive, I was a lizard. I bent my fingers toward myself, using the backs of my nails to type the word.

With a faint beeping sound, a little light by the keypad turned red. It was the wrong password. I cursed, quietly, of course, and tried 'Suzaku,' 'Kururugi Suzaku,' 'Nunnaly Vi Britannia,' and even 'Orange Boy.' None of them worked. Suddenly I remembered a news broadcast, the one that had showed Lelouch being voted into the UFN with the representatives at gunpoint. Near the very beginning, a boy had climbed up on the security gates and yelled to him, insisting that he was his best friend from when they went to school there.

What was the academy's name again? 'Ashford,' that was it. I tried that, but it failed too. What had that student called Lelouch? Larson, no, Lander, no, Lamprey, Lampru, Lamperouge?

'Nunnaly Lamperouge,' was the seventh password I tried, and to my utter amazement, the light turned green and my plummeting stomach informed me that I was being conveyed down the elevator shaft at a vary rapid pace. For a moment all I could see through the grille was the wall as it flew upwards past me, but then the wall ended abruptly, and I found myself looking down on a massive cylindrical expanse, far too huge to be called a room. It was dimly lit with pale silvery lights, and there was a catwalk with a railing that spiraled around the whole thing, from the roof to the floor.

The elevator stopped at the first level, though I saw that it could go lower. It had automatically taken me to the highest level, and I decided I'd get out and have a look around before deciding if I wanted to go lower.

My parents' house had a hallway for the upper levels that was open on one side and looked beyond a railing down into the living room. This was a little like that, but on a mega-grand-stupendously-larger scale. The walls were made entirely from what appeared to be ordinary Plexiglas, in sheets about five centimeters thick, with holes about a centimeter wide drilled through at intervals to allow for airflow. The "rooms" that they enclosed were about the size of the bedroom in my old apartment, with a toilet in each, and no other furniture, though there were restraints for neck, wrists and ankles hanging limply from the walls.

There were three or four people in each, alternating in gender with men in every other cell, and women in the cells in between. I realized that they were cells because all of the people inside were wearing those straitjacket prison outfits, and they all looked exhausted and depressed and hopeless and, well, like prisoners in a dungeon ought to look.

I made my way down a staircase I found after some hunting, not wanting to walk down the entire spiral ramp or get back into the elevator and hope the password hadn't changed, but curious to see what the place was like further down. It would descend six steps, and then make a ninety degree turn, so that it formed something like a square spiral. When I reached the bottom, I took a look at the inmates of the first cell I saw, and was surprised to see two slightly familiar faces. They were both female scientists; one, Nina, the developer of the F.L.E.I.J.A. warhead unless I missed my guess, and the other was the assistant to the guy who developed the Lancelot. There were two other women, one with long blonde hair, and the other with a hairdo very similar to mine; short brown layers, though her hair was much straighter and hung close to her face, whereas mine was stubbornly wavy and had to be kept even shorter than hers if it was to be manageable.

I stepped hesitantly closer, but my high-heeled shoes (to match my pale pink silk dress with the wide, flowing skirt) made a loud clicking sound on the smooth stone floor no matter how gently I set them down, and they looked up at me. The short-haired woman glared at me with an intensity that made up for the lifelessness of the first level.

"What do you want?" she snarled. I took a step back; feeling like a large fierce tiger had me cornered, instead of a woman in a straitjacket behind a Plexiglas wall. I told myself to calm down; her enraged aura wasn't nearly as strong as Lelouch's, and I wasn't very scared of him anymore.

"I'm just having a look 'round," I explained, taking another step back. "Wait, I saw you on TV, didn't I? You're one of the Four Holy Swords, correct?"

"What of it?" she spat venomously. I sighed. This was going nowhere.

"Nothing at all, oh revered saber-tooth tigress," I retorted, whirling in a cloud of pink skirt and flouncing off in a different direction. Walking along the bottom floor of the dungeon was much like being at the bottom of a big wastepaper basket, I mused as I clicked along the floor, peering shyly at all of the people within the cells. The general response was a fairly even divide between harsh glaring and supreme indifference.

I spotted a man I took for Kyoshiro Tohdoh, kneeling _seiza_ with his eyes closed, like he was meditating. I saw a girl around my own age with messy pinkish hair, in a cell with a pair of girls who were far too young to be in any sort of jail. One had black hair and looked the perfect picture of a Japanese twelve-or-thirteen-year-old. The other had platinum blonde hair with an odd cut, and couldn't have been more than ten. She stared out at me with pleading eyes, and I was so caught off-guard that I blurted out in Britannian, "how old are you?"

It came out sounding a great deal harsher than I intended, and there was a sudden sharp movement from the cell directly beside the one that had caught my attention. I shifted my gaze to within to see none other than Li Xingke, on one knee with his arms up in a defensive manner, as though preparing to rush to the aid of the little girl I had just, well, kind of shouted at, heedless of the fact that there was an impenetrable wall between them. He seemed to realize this too, and settled for giving me one of those 'looks-that-kill,' disregarding once again the fact that they really _can't_.

I took a breath and addressed the girl again, more quietly in Japanese.

"_Sumimasen_," I started, "I'm sorry; I was just surprised. How old are you?"

"I'll be nine next month," the girl replied in a squeaky little voice. She must have been crying recently, and the black-haired Japanese girl put an arm around her.

"So young to carry the fate of so many," announced a very familiar over-dramatic voice from behind me. I turned around to see Lelouch striding down the stairs towards us. "She's Empress Tien Zi, of the Chinese Federation," he explained for my benefit. "She and the other UFN delegates are going to be staying here for a while."

"While you mess up their countries?" I guessed shrewdly. He laughed, and I didn't like this one nearly so much as the others. It was entirely fake, without any of the surprise or other emotions I had come to expect when this response was elicited from him.

"Xingke," he addressed the Chinese man, who now looked very much like he would throw himself at the wall until it smashed. Was he that determined to protect the little Empress? But it didn't matter, since they were in different cells. "It would seem you've become acquainted with the woman who provided the information on the imperial security systems. This is Monozuki Koneko, daughter of a certain pioneer in modern electronic guard systems."

Xingke looked suddenly alert when he heard that, and I could guess what was going through his head. In his mind, I was either a double agent who sent him information to trap him, or I was a prisoner in a prettier straitjacket.

"Yes," Lelouch continued, hamming it up, "she's well-known for being fearless, and has excellent martial arts skill along with the mental faculties required to prepare and execute strategy, but even she is not without her weaknesses. When she heard that a certain little boy was imprisoned, her defenses were useless. You are familiar, no doubt, with Jayden Lance's unfortunate incarceration? In exchange for his freedom, she forfeited her own, and agreed to remain here as my wife.

So now you see how futile it is to struggle against me! There is no one in this world I cannot conquer! Just be grateful I did not decide that a Chinese-Britannian match was more suitable." Here he leered at the Empress, who whimpered and shrunk into the chest of the Japanese girl, who glared balefully at their captor.

'Jerk,' I thought. 'You can say pervy stuff about me if you like, it doesn't really bother me that much, but she's _tiny_! What the heck!'

"As for you, my dear Empress," he addressed me in a voice that could have come from a snake, "you will refrain from wandering this far down in the future. I have changed the passwords for the elevator, and I do not advise attempting to break them again."

"I take it I triggered a silent alarm with my failed attempts," I groused. I had been rather expecting that when I had decided to take the stairs.

"That is correct," he affirmed, and strode back over to the stairs, gesturing for me to precede him.

"Manners," I asked, "or perhaps you don't trust me behind you?" He smirked and, not feeling like incurring that first lovers' spat just yet, I swept past him up the stairs to the first landing, where the elevator awaited.

We rode in relative silence for a while until finally I couldn't stand it any more and turned to face him with what I was sure was a pout on my face.

"What was that all about?" I demanded hotly. "That didn't sound anything like what you told me!"

"I prefer people to see me as the sort of person who would take a woman in a power-play, than know the truth. It is for the sake of royal image, you understand?" He turned to look down at me calmly, and I found myself mesmerized for a moment by his appearance. He was attractive, I realized, as I stared into his eyes, which were suddenly heavy with sorrow, though a moment later he looked away and his expression went back to normal.

When we exited the elevator, it was through a door in an upper hallway, and the secondary keypad for putting in the password slid into the wall and was covered by a sheet of steel. The elevator looked like a perfectly ordinary one, and the only people who would ever know that it was the way into the secret dungeon were those who already knew about it. I had gotten lucky apparently, by finding it while it was already prepared for a descent into the lower levels.

Lelouch was like that, I realized suddenly. I, who was predisposed to believe in the unbelievable, would be the only one besides people like Suzaku who already _knew_ who could figure out that his public face was a mask. As he turned away, I saw a sinking of his shoulders, like he was exhausted, or depressed, or even a little regretful.

Nobody who was truly evil would look like that.

In the middle of the hallway, looking intently at his retreating figure, I swore to myself that I was going to find out what made him tick. For some reason, a perfectly nice individual was playing the role of the wicked Emperor, and I aimed to find out what that reason was.

My hobby had become an obsession.

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

I chose of my own will to embark on this path, and I won't regret it. I refuse to regret it.

But there is some merit to the idea that ignorance is bliss.

Still, if I did not know, than I wouldn't know what I could do to support him; I wouldn't know how to love him.

I do love him, don't I…

Chapter 7) **Midnight; Under the Sable Velvet Sky!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Midnight; Under the Sable Velvet Sky**

One night, I woke up at half-past eleven with my stomach rumbling and no matter what I did, I could not get back to sleep. Eventually I decided that if I really was going to live here for the rest of my life, I ought to do the same thing I'd have done at my old place; go get a snack. I threw on a simple blue plaid sundress that I found in the back of my wardrobe and crept down the deserted hallways, lit only by and electric lantern that had been provided to me, probably for occasions like this.

A week had passed since the incident in the dungeon, and between then and now I had successfully confirmed that a) Lelouch had some kind of heavy burden weighing him down, b) he really was very unhappy about what he was doing to the people, and c) that wasn't preventing him from _continuing_ to do it.

He was teaching me to play chess, though I had already learned the basics from my father long ago. He seemed to enjoy when we would play and I would make some smart move and force him to retreat. He also seemed to enjoy talking about arbitrary subjects, but sometimes he would go all quiet without any warning, often when we talked about human nature. He once said that humans got into a cycle of hatred, and that they wouldn't break out of it until they were given something worse to hate.

By the time I reached the kitchen I knew exactly what I wanted. Eggs were all very well and I loved them, but breakfast was supposed to consist of toast with peanut butter or margarine. This tradition was only bent in favor of things like chocolate cake or doughnuts lying around begging to be eaten. I hadn't consumed any peanut butter in a week, and tonight I was determined to have some even if I had to hop into my car and drive for an hour to get back to my local supermarket and buy it.

Fortunately for me, I was able to locate some in a cupboard after very little rummaging, and found some fresh-baked bread in a bag on the countertop. I had brought my purse with me, mostly for my phone so I could see what time it was, but I discarded it on a counter top. I didn't turn on the light; I didn't want my eyes to become accustomed to it and then have to grope blindly on the way back to my room. That was why I was able to detect the shift in the position of my shadow from the appearance of a light behind me.

I turned around at the waist, not wanting to stop cutting the bread for someone who was probably just a servant, and managed to slash across my finger when I saw Lelouch in a pair of pajama pants and a tee-shirt, holding a lantern like mine and looking decidedly ill.

"You don't look so good," I commented, trying to hold my cut finger so I wouldn't get blood on the bread.

"What did you do?" he asked, coming around an island to where he could see me more clearly. "There's a first aid kit in here somewhere," he informed me when he noticed my bleeding finger, and after a bit of groping around in a cabinet, he managed to extract it, and locate a sticking plaster.

"I can do that," I protested, but he shook his head.

"I've already started," he countered, and washed the crumbs from the cut in the sink before wrapping the bandage around it.

"You do know you look like you're going to hurl, don't you?" I reminded him. He looked worse close up.

"Did that already," he admitted. "I'm here for some food; I have to eat something with this medicine I'm supposed to take. Make me some of whatever you're having, will you?"

"I'll do you one better," I offered, and snagged my purse from the spot where I had tossed it. "I've got these things called Quick Packs™; they're fast-working antacid powder with a sweet flavor that you can take without water, and certainly without putting food in an upset stomach."

"You carry them around with you?" he asked, crooking an eyebrow up.

"I get tummy aches from stress sometimes," I confessed dryly. "Sound familiar?" His guard snapped up and the weird camaraderie I had sensed when he helped me with my finger dissolved.

"I have the flu," he snapped.

"You're stressed," I accused flatly. "I'm not blind, you know." His mask came down and he chuckled sheepishly, taking the quick pack and knocking it back after snipping the top off with kitchen scissors.

After that, we sat together on the countertop while I munched on toast and he sipped pop, hoping the carbonation would help settle his stomach more. I couldn't help but keep glancing at him out of my peripheral vision, one, because in an ordinary tee-shirt and pajama pants, he was really very attractive even though he still looked ill and unhappy, and two because I was a little worried about him.

"Uh, Lelouch," I finally addressed him, "you know, when you're stressed out about something, bouncing ideas for a solution off of someone—in this case me—might help." He surveyed me critically, and then said something rather unexpected.

"I'd rather hear your impressions, Koneko, if that's alright." I blinked at him several times, and then needing no second invitation, launched into the small stash of facts I had succeeded in getting my hands on.

"First off, and most importantly, you're not evil per say, though you do a lot of evil things, like having an eight-year-old imprisoned, or making Mt. Fuji erupt. The thing is, you seem to regret these things when you do them, which is what tipped me off that everything's not as it seems, you know?"

He nodded thoughtfully, and gestured for me to continue.

"Why are you asking me this?" I queried suspiciously. He chuckled softly.

"I need some feedback, to learn how to fool people better, don't I? Otherwise, I'll spend the rest of my life running from characters like you, who see too much for comfort."

"As long as it's not something creepy like, 'I want to know if you know too much to be kept alive.'" I cautioned, and to my absolute astonishment, irritation, fear and confusion, he _actually pulled a gun out from somewhere and trained it on me._ "What—"

"I just want to hear your impressions," he reminded me coldly. "This may not even be necessary." We glared at each other for a moment, and then I began to lay down my conclusions and the observations I had based them on.

He was prone to the theatrical; quite the drama queen, really, and this seemed to aid greatly in his carefully cultivated façade. He was a bit childish, in that he hated to lose, but he tended to have some grudging respect for anyone good enough to beat him. He was sad. I had to stop there and think about the best way to explain it. He not only regretted what he was doing, he seemed to suffer along with the people he hurt, which was an odd attribute for anyone with power and especially for someone who did such cruel things.

His attempts to suppress people were certainly very harsh, but they weren't the brilliant strategies I expected from the guy who successfully took over the world.

"With the exception of Australia," he amended lightly. "Australia remained neutral throughout both my reign and that of my father. Incidentally, some Australian bureaucrats are flying in from Sidney next weekend to hand in their written surrender. They won't last very long with my trade boycott like a noose around their necks."

"See, that's what I'm talking about!" I exclaimed. "You continuously stamp out any resistance, but you do it in such a way as to enflame the hearts of the people against you. Eventually, they're all going to get sick and tired of this and come string you up one night. Don't you realize that your pressure on them is like creating a great big boiler and then welding it shut? Eventually, it'll explode, and when it does, it won't look pretty.

Still," I had to admit, "if it wasn't you, someone else would probably be doing something similar, though maybe not on such a grand scale. It's like people need someone to strive against, so when one dictator or oppressor or enemy country is taken out, it's replaced by something worse. You said something to that effect yourself.

This is different though. It's like you want them to hate you, to reject you, and if that really is what you want—for reasons which I cannot fathom—then you've succeeded with the whole world! Well, minus Australia, but if you follow the same pattern as everything else you've done, you'll have such humiliating terms of surrender that they'll either have to live with the stranglehold you've got on their economy, or disarm and a whole bunch of other stuff, right?"

He nodded as though in approval of my logic.

"Do you even realize what a dangerous position you're putting yourself in?" I quizzed in irritation. "If everyone in the world hates you, then eventually _someone_ is going to figure out that a good double tap to the head would effectively bring about…

Oh my…!"

I couldn't breathe. I felt like the air was being siphoned from my lungs as my brain provided the answer I had been seeking for the past two weeks.

With the "cycle of hatred" focused entirely on him, discrimination and bigotry were cast aside, replaced by the greater evil. All of the warring countries and quarreling factions on earth had stopped fighting because they were suddenly united against a common enemy.

With an iron grip on the world, Lelouch had become the object of all the negative energy in it.

So when he was defeated, all of the negativity would, theoretically, be put to rest, perhaps for a few generations even!

I didn't have the words to describe how I was feeling aloud. I wasn't just overawed, I wasn't just thrilled. I was more than satisfied with the results of my search. I was amazed, so amazed that he would have the strength to do that. It stupefied me that he would endure the abhorrence of the entire earth, bear their rejection and their scorn, their aggression and their fear, in order to save them. It made me ecstatic that someone like him would exist, could exist, outside the pages of a storybook.

It broke my heart to think of how this must be for him. My lungs didn't want to fill; it was like I was being asphyxiated by my own compassion.

If he was throwing up in the middle of the night, it meant that he wasn't oblivious to their antagonism and his isolation from every other living human on the planet; their utter and complete rejection and detestation of him.

Not to mention, what would they _do_ to him when they finally took him down? He _must_ know that he was going to die. Maybe that was the greatest reason for his emotional state. He was still human after all, he had to be afraid of death.

Death…

He wouldn't let them capture him, would he? After all, they wouldn't just kill him, they'd have to torture and humiliate and punish him first. Did that mean he already knew he was going to be assassinated? Had he arranged for it or something? But who would he trust with that; not just his life, but his death, and his secret?

The answer came right along on the heels of the others. It would be Suzaku, of course. He was the only possible answer. It explained his faked demise, which hadn't made any sense to me at all before.

This also explained why Lelouch had said it was better for people to think I was coerced into getting engaged to him. That way, when he… when he _died_, I'd be safe.

"You know something?" I blurted out impulsively, making him look up suddenly. He had been prodding at his eye as though trying to remove a stray eyelash. "I don't much like flowers."

"You don't?" he prompted quizzically.

"Right," I asserted. "When autumn comes, they just droop and wilt and fade away into nothing; when it's their time to die, they just give up. I like leaves better. They're tougher in general than flowers, and when the cold weather starts up, it's like they all decide that as long as they're going, they may as well go out in a blaze of glory.

They change colors, throwing off their homely disguises, until the forests look like great infernos and the ground is carpeted with brilliant living flames! They may not be around forever, but when they know their time has come," my voice sounded rough for some reason, but I continued anyway, "they leave us with a memory of what they could do when they put their minds to it; a picture of vibrant beauty that leaves us remembering them until spring comes again!"

My throat ached horribly, and from the prickling in my eyes, I had a sneaking suspicion of what my body was about to do. "That's why autumn's my favorite season," I whispered, willing my voice to hold.

He was going to die. He had planned this strategy knowing that it would help to bring mankind into a brighter future, even knowing that his own would have to be sacrificed. My vision was blurring, and I could see that he had pointed the gun at my midriff, off to one side. He meant to wound me, but not kill me.

Did he think that would be enough to get me to hate him now?

Was he stupid? Or was he just desperate?

What was coursing through me was stronger than emotion. It wasn't love, or pride, or sorrow, or awe, or compassion, but it was all and more, up and beyond these; an indescribable connection, something like adoration or respect. He couldn't change my mind now with a gun. Nothing, no force on this earth, could do that.

I still rather hoped he wouldn't shoot me though.

He was tugging at his lower eyelid again, and the part of me that was probably ADD wondered if he wore contact lenses as I cleared my throat. I hoped desperately that my voice would sound steady as I started to speak.

"Lelouch, you're not going to be able to threaten me with a gun," I told him. "You won't shoot me, I know it."

"Are you certain of that?" he asked, looking up at me, his fingers still hovering near his eye. I nodded solemnly.

"You're not going to shoot anything with the safety on," I explained gently. His eyes widened a bit and, apparently unable to help himself (even though this was the dumbest trick in the proverbial book) he glanced briefly down at the weapon. It was as his eyes moved back up to look at me in disgust that I struck, snatching the gun from his hand and flinging it across the room, where it went off with the heavy click of a silenced shot and the bullet struck a cabinet door, making a neat little hole with long messy vertical cracks running up and down the wood grain from it.

"Really though," I confessed, "that wouldn't have done anything. You could have made me pretty mad, or killed me, but there's no way I could hate you _now_." He smirked, still rubbing his eyes. "Do you have something in your eyes?" I asked, a little irritated. I had just had an epiphany for Pete's sake! He snapped a look up at me, and did a bit of a double-take. I knew why. My eyes were protesting having their tears held in, and had likely become bloodshot and damp.

"Your opinion?" he whispered, leaning back against the cabinet above the counter on which he sat and putting his hands on his knees.

"The writer in me loves it," I answered truthfully. "It's… amazing, stupendous, indescribable." I shook my head helplessly. I really, honestly couldn't put it into words.

"What about the human in you?" he questioned. I tried to speak, but the ache in my throat wouldn't let me for several tries.

"I," I finally got out, but it sounded like a sob, "I just…" but then I was weeping in earnest, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes in an effort to stem the tears that started to cascade down my face. "You're going to die, aren't you?" I managed to convey with much effort and sniffling. He nodded.

"Yes, it's the most expedient and, truthfully, least painful way to resolve this."

"Suzaku, right?" I choked out.

"Who else?" he countered.

"Aren't you," I probed hesitantly, "aren't you scared?"

"I'm up losing my dinner in the middle of the night," he reminded me in a barely audible whisper. "I'm petrified, Koneko. That's actually the reason I wanted you here. You distract me, you see."

I nodded. That made perfect sense.

It was all a brilliant farce, designed to fool every living person into having what it took to coexist with one another. It blew my mind with how monumentally amazing it was, but I couldn't seem to stop crying. I felt rather than saw him slide closer, and then gradually, haltingly, as if he didn't know if it was such a good idea, wrap an arm around my shoulder.

Even though I generally shied away from any affectionate human contact, not being from a hug-ey family to begin with, I buried my face in his tee-shirt and gripped the material as I wailed heartbrokenly.

He was going to die.

DIE, as in, be shot or stabbed or something, and bleed until his heart stopped and he went cold and stiff and lifeless.

The fact that he knew, had even orchestrated the date of his own death, was just incomprehensibly brave. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. If I asked anyone I knew if they would try and save themselves from death, of course every one of them would say that they would; it's human nature. The fact that he was denying it and succumbing to his planned fate for the sake of the world… I hate to use slang for something as deep as this, but it blew my mind.

I think I wasn't just crying from sorrow over losing him and compassion over his fate, but also from the shear weight of the realization. Dying for someone else didn't sound quite as hard as people would think, after all, in the heat of the moment, if you love someone enough, it shouldn't be impossible to jump in front of a bullet or something. This was different though.

I wondered how long he had known, how long ago he had planned this.

Not only that, but he had decided that he loved the people on this planet, even those whom he had never met, _enough to be hated by them_, and then to die.

My brain spun in circles and I couldn't stop crying. Lelouch actually slipped down to stand in front of me where I sat on the countertop so that he could put both of his arms around me and rest the side of his face on the top of my head. I wept uncontrollably for a long time, and after that, I remained still, wanting to be held by him, to feel him touching me, to know that he was still here.

"You should go to bed," he finally murmured. "It's nearly twelve-thirty." I sat up straight and swept my fingers under my eyes. When they came away black, I could've fainted from humiliation.

"This is why I hate mascara!" I exclaimed, voice hoarse from crying. "It never comes all the way off when I wash my face… good grief, I must look like horrible!" I rubbed until my fingers started coming away clean.

"Koneko, you're gorgeous," Lelouch told me matter-of-factly, swiping his thumb across a spot I had missed, and then running the fingers of that hand through my hair.

I smiled gratefully (fairly sure that he was lying because that's "the thing to say" when a girl comments on her mussed appearance, but grateful all the same.) Then, and I don't know for sure which of us started it, though we were certainly both thinking it, we drew closer together, and our lips met. I slid off the countertop to press myself close to him and wrap my arms around him, tangling my fingers in his shaggy hair.

I felt like there was an electric current running between him and me, or maybe a gravitational force pulling us together, and as we seperated, I was even surer than I had been half an hour ago; no force on earth, not even imminent death, could alter how I felt now.

I had fallen absolutely, unconditionally, unreservedly and permanently in love with Lelouch.

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

I have been so hopelessly naïve. I thought I knew what I wanted; to be a published authoress, to grow my hair long and have it not be a mess, to learn the knack of living in an apartment that's not always trashed.

All of that takes second place now to what I want, just for this briefest of moments.

I want to be his healer, his helpmate, his comforter.

I want to be his wife.

Chapter 8) **Man of Ice; Man of Snow.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Tums™ or Tums Quick Pack™ or have anything to do with the company, the product or the trademark.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Man of Ice; Man of Snow**

I slept deeply and well that night, probably due to exhausting myself crying, though maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had successfully solved a rather big mystery. The next morning my maids had to physically shake me out of the depths of my slumber.

If I was a little bleary-eyed at breakfast, Lelouch made no comment, but as soon as the servants finished bringing out the food and left us alone, he let his façade melt away completely and smiled very warmly and genuinely as he asked how I had slept.

"I don't think I could've slept better if you hit me over the head with a hammer," I confessed with a giggle. "Anyway, aren't we on TV today or something?"

"That's right," he affirmed, gulping down a piece of fruit to clear his mouth for speaking. "The official announcement of our engagement. Look, Koneko, since this is on national television, could you try and be kind of…"

"A wallflower?" I finished as he seemed to search for the right word. He nodded approvingly.

"That should work just fine."

Throughout the rest of breakfast, we talked about a variety of nature-related memories, with me describing hikes and camping trips I had taken with my parents, and him chiming in with memories of spending time in the woods as a child with Nunnaly and Suzaku. Somehow I think this topic came up because we had leaves on the brain, and I noticed to my great pleasure that the vases on the table and in the window-wells which were typically full of flowers now had arrangements of greenery fanning out from their mouths.

I don't know how it was managed in the short time I had been living there, but a dress had been made for me out of the same bejeweled white cloth that formed Lelouch's state robes, even down to the red ruby eyes down the front of the bodice. We had to match when the world was looking at us. I also had a cloak like his, but no stupid-looking hat. That was what the circlet perched on my head, now attached to a sparkly white veil with the occasional gemstone sewn in, was for.

I took my seat in the throne room on my chair beside Lelouch and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible, which I imagined would be what I was doing if I really didn't want to be there. The camera crew from the local news station was late, and Lelouch treated them to his typical cold python gaze as they set up their equipment in a flurry of nervous movement.

The reporter who had been sent to cover us wasn't the energetic blonde girl I had lately become accustomed to seeing on the morning news. It was a man in his forties, balding, and obviously very willing to do whatever was asked of him if it meant keeping his livelihood and his life. As the tech crew worked at triple speed, he was looking over a clipboard with some papers on it that I imagined were a script of everything he was allowed to say.

I had searched my name on the internet a few days previously and as I had rather expected, everything that came up had me as, "rumored to be in a relationship with the Emperor." This broadcast wasn't really going to tell anyone anything they didn't know. Its only purpose was to make the point to the world that Lelouch had made to Xingke; that he could do whatever his evil little heart desired, and no one could do anything about it, even me.

The clipboard did indeed contain a script, and I sort of glazed over as the reporter guy read through it like it was really news. Lelouch made a mini-speech about power or something, with his aura intensity blowing the top off of the gauge, as it were, and then the cameras were packed up and hauled out. The whole thing had taken less than an hour.

Afterwards, we played a game of chess while he told me about how he had been Zero, how he had started the Black Rebellion to avenge his mother's murder. I chose not to remind him that he had not too long ago claimed to be that very murderer when he said he had "obliterated both of his parents himself." It didn't make sense to me, but I could tell it was a sensitive issue and now that I had my answers, I didn't want to probe too deeply where my big, intrusive nose wasn't welcome.

A week went by like an hour, and the way time was racing along terrified me.

I always had trouble understanding why folks married people with terminal illnesses; the only good reason I could think of was so that they could with clear consciences sleep together. Other than that, what was the point? It wasn't like they had a future to look forward to.

I knew differently now. Perhaps because I didn't know the exact date, I felt like every second that passed stole Lelouch a little farther away from me, like every breath he took was one closer to his last. I wanted to know that even if it was just for now, he was mine, and I his.

We were married in the garden, in the tree-gazebo near the spot where I had first met Suzaku. I wore a kimono that I had bought with my mother on her last visit to Tokyo, and Suzaku even snuck back into the country in disguise to attend. He, Orange and the pastor fellow who preformed the ceremony, (sworn to secrecy of course, and I'd guess along with a healthy donation to his little parish) were the only attendees, unless one counts Arthur. The whole thing was very discreet.

When Lelouch suggested that we do things this way, I was elated, but also crushed. That meant that the set date of our wedding, some four months away, was set _after_ his planned date of death. Time was being snipped shorter and shorter and, like a ribbon with bits being cut off of the end, it could only get shorter still; the snippets could never be reattached.

I wore my circlet like a headband with the open part at the bottom, like any that could be found at a corner store. Suzaku took pictures, even though they could never be shown to anyone who wasn't already in attendance. I was exceedingly grateful. I knew he was taking them for my benefit in the years to come.

Lelouch dismissed my maids until further notice so he could sleep in my room without any danger of being caught in an awkward position. His room was too highly trafficked by guards and other employees to be considered private.

I had a wedding ring, but it was a tiny size three affair that I wore on my pinky. It was a thin band of silver, little more than a flattened wire of it really, with a simple maple leaf on it carved from the same metal. The decoration was very flat for a ring and it weighed practically nothing, as well as being a good fit for that finger, so I could comfortably wear it without typically knowing that it was there.

Suzaku vanished again, probably to some hidey-hole in Antarctica or something like that. I was afraid of the next time I would see him, because it would mean that our time was almost up. I didn't ask when it was going to happen, and he didn't tell me. I think we both realized that if I knew, I wouldn't be able to prevent myself from begging him to postpone it for a week, a day, an hour.

He woke in the night occasionally feeling ill, and we would talk about something unrelated until he was able to get back to sleep. Sometimes I did too, actually. I really didn't have a right to be as anxious as he, the condemned, but I too dreaded the day when we would have to say our final farewells.

As if in recognition of that, we both seemed to try to pack as much as we could of lives that should have been long into the time we had remaining to us. He canceled a lot of appointments so we could spend time together, and we took long walks in the garden and sat for hours on the top floor of the front palace, surveying the landscape from the wide windows.

We tried dinner by candlelight, which I rather enjoyed, and ate breakfast on the rooftop one day, and I even tried to show him the basics of martial arts, at which he was quite horrible. He told me stories from the Black Rebellion, and I told him about all of the plot bunnies I wanted to turn into novels. He made my day by giving me the phone numbers of a couple of good publishing agents.

We compared highschool experiences, and the relative merits of siblings versus no siblings. We talked endlessly about books, though he tended to like deeper stuff than I did; I was into action-romance and comedy. I only liked tragedy if it was done exceptionally well.

"This story we're in right now, for example," I pointed out one evening. "You, as the main character, experience tragedy and suffering, but it's done well because in return you are able to protect what's important to you, so depending on one's point of view it's either a great triumph or a great loss. If I was watching this as a movie, I'm sure I wouldn't know whether to cry or applaud at the end, and that's what makes it so good."

A fortnight passed and Lelouch's evil-aura was always at peak level whenever the servants or anyone but myself or Orange Boy—who seemed to be "in the know,"—was around. It no longer affected me. I knew that it was a defense mechanism, the wall that he put up to protect himself from prying eyes. I clung to every day together, always hyper-aware that the next one might be our last.

He seemed alternately soft and brittle, like sometimes he was made of ice, which was strong and hard but easily shattered, and others of snow, so deep and soft yet strewn about by a single movement.

One night I was taking off my earrings before bed when he came up and touched my shoulder. I looked around, and for some reason he had averted his face, staring off to the side and a little down.

"What is it?" I asked quizzically.

"I wonder if you would do me a favor," he requested in a quiet yet strained voice.

"Of course," I responded automatically, turning to face him properly. "What is it?" He looked up at me, and as we made eye-contact, my heart started pounding.

"Lelouch," I murmured in confusion, "what happened to your eyes? Why do they look like that? What's going o—"

"Koneko," he addressed me, and the words I was about to say flew from my mind like leaves scattered in the wind. My gaze was riveted on him. I could not look away. "I don't want you to have to bear this alone when I'm gone."

I tried to speak, but my tongue wouldn't respond to the commands of my stunned brain. What was happening?

"I want you to know how much I appreciate you staying with me over the last few weeks. You have been like the moon illuminating my dark night of the soul as my life draws to a close.

Thank you.

I love you.

Goodbye.

**Lelouch Vi Britannia commands you! You, like the rest of the human race, will despise and revile me for being the man who took your freedom, blackened your name by attaching it to his own, stole your innocence, shattered your dreams, and destroyed your willpower! **

**I command you to hate me!**"

So this was how he did it. This was how he got people like Schniezel and the rest of the former nobles to go along with him.

I sank to my knees. It wasn't a choice; my body wouldn't obey me. My mind was too chaotic to control it. I knew that something weird was happening to my brain, but it was imperfect, because I was aware that it was happening.

"Le…lou…" I gasped, but I couldn't remember how to move my mouth to form his name. I looked up with herculean effort and saw that his red eyes were streaming with tears as he reached down and took hold of my ring. Instinctively I clenched my fist. He couldn't do this!

He couldn't!

He couldn't do it because I…

Because I… what?

Why didn't I want him to leave, or to take my ring? What was the problem again?

I looked up at his face, that face so full of malice that laughed as men suffered and died for his will to be carried out. His eyes _ought_ to be red; it suited their cruelty.

So, why was he crying?

Who cared anyway? He _deserved_ to cry. He _should_ suffer. I _hoped_ whatever was bothering him was _really_, _really_ bad.

Why did I hope that?

No clue.

Don't know, don't care.

Do I?

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats**_**:**

Something is dreadfully wrong, but I can't put my finger on what it is. My mind is in a fog of confusion, and no matter what I do, it will not clear.

It doesn't matter though, because there is one thing I know for certain, one feeling, like a guiding star as bright as the sun, leading me along and showing me the way.

It's something… something about Lelouch… right?

Chapter 9) **Tenacity; I Said Not to Underestimate Me!**


	10. Chapter 10

**Tenacity; I Said Not To Underestimate Me!**

I woke up feeling like something was wrong, but not knowing what. It was a feeling I often got on the day of a test I knew I was going to fail or some other dreaded event, and when I was younger it often got me a free pass out of whatever I was doing, because I would experience physical symptoms like nausea, aches, grogginess and depression. Sometimes I even got a low-grade fever, which was cool if I was actually trying to get out of something, but was really annoying once I got old enough that going somewhere a little sick was not unacceptable.

I sat up in bed and slapped myself with both hands on either side of my face like the anime characters did to snap themselves out of stuff. It didn't work. I still felt out of it, and my cheeks now stung.

What was I dreading again? I couldn't quite recall, though I got a funny feeling that there was someone nearby that I really didn't want to see. Did I have a job interview today? That would certainly account for stress, but when I looked around at my surroundings, I remembered that I didn't need to worry about supporting myself anymore, because I was marrying…

I was marrying Lelouch.

That was what I was dreading.

Because I loathed Lelouch, hated him with a fury bordering on insanity, and not the nice kind that I often flaunted; my brand of crazy, the one he liked… Wait, he liked it? Shouldn't that make it bad?

I was confused.

I also didn't feel very good and to make it worse, when I looked in my purse for a Quick-Pack™ to help settle my stomach, the one I always kept in my wallet was gone. I swore quietly and went to get a glass of water from my little refrigerator, which I hoped would be the next best thing. When did I use my trusty packet, I wondered? I seemed to recall giving it away, but when I tried to conjure up a face for the recipient, I drew a blank. I couldn't even remember the circumstances behind the action.

It was raining outside, though there was no lightning or thunder. I was a little sad about that. The last time I was super-stressed out about something, a thunder storm had put me in a much better mood… Wasn't it Lelouch I had been stressed out about that time too? That guy was really a thorn in my side.

At least for now, since I didn't have to see him today, I could feel free to hate on him in private. I got my laptop out of my backpack and opened up a word document. Maybe if I based a villain off of him and then had some super-hot good guy come and kill him, I'd feel better.

Kill him?

For some reason, I felt a pang of physical pain shoot through my chest. I dreaded… his death? That didn't make any sense. I despised him, so if he died, wouldn't that be convenient? Oh well. Maybe I was just too nice a person to wish for the death of even someone as evil as him.

Okay, I knew _that_ wasn't the reason.

Something was definitely wrong, like a sour note in a symphony, but so faint that it itself could not be heard. Instead, it threw off the harmony of all the other instruments while remaining incongruous and generally unnoticed.

I tried to type out a basic outline for a character based off of him, thinking that maybe I would just abandon the idea of killing him off. Perhaps if he was captured at the end or for some reason even died a _noble_ death, it would be better than just getting killed off as the "bad guy."

Why did the phrase "_noble death_," aggravate that discordant note in my mind?

I closed my laptop and went to shower. Maybe the hot water would help me to think more clearly, and anyway, my short hair was sticking up in the back from being slept on.

"_You do an excellent rooster impression, Koneko."_

The teasing voice echoed faintly through the halls of my mind and I physically stopped and grabbed at my temples. Driving my fingertips into my scalp until they hurt, I strained my mind to try and grasp at the sound, trying to remember who had said that, and why I felt such a pleasant mixture of humor and embarrassment. I didn't generally let people see me with bed-head; even when I went to morning Aikido practice before showering, I would run a wet comb through it if it was really awful.

For a moment I thought the voice might've been Lelouch's, but there was no way I would have let him of all people see me right after I woke up! I may not be trying to impress him, but I had my pride.

"Ugh!" I whispered aloud, "get out of my head, monster! Loathsome! Repugnant! Abhorrent!"

Why was he so distasteful to me again? The reason behind it had slipped my mind.

That wouldn't do; I always had a good reason for my opinions being what they were, so I sat down on the carpet and crossed my legs, pretzel-style. What was my logic? There must be logic!

He was the evil Emperor. That was the first thing that came to mind, but for some reason the claim sounded false, as if I knew better, as if he had some other motive for what he had done. Anyway, wasn't that the core reason I had agreed to this? Discovering his motive? But then, I _didn't_ actually do it to save Jayden? My mind felt like there was a thick fog overlying my memories, and I could only see vague shapes in the gloom.

I knew what he had done. I had even seen his prisoners in the dungeon, and met the little girl who looked so terrorized, Tien Zi of the Chinese Federation. Why didn't I think he was altogether evil?

My mother had once complimented me by telling me I always looked for the best in people. I considered that high praise, not for moral reasons, but because the good is often the hardest part of human nature to find, so it was like she had told me I loved a challenge.

"_Human nature,"_ struck the off-key note again. _"Humans need something to strive against because they become accustomed to striving,"_ the Emperor had once told me. _"When one evil is defeated, something worse always rises up to replace it. If the cycle isn't broken, it will continue indefinitely. That's just human nature."_

This was becoming ridiculous, I thought as I forced myself to get into the shower. Why would he talk to me like that, and in such a friendly tone, when we're obviously antagonistic towards one another? But did I doubt the evidence of my own mind? I would be the first to admit that my memories were not always accurate, but somehow I didn't want to disbelieve this one. It was almost like it had been a very important memory, something that had shaped me, changed my thinking, and altered my point of view so that I could see more clearly.

That was right; I didn't want to let go of my base piece of evidence.

_But what was I gathering evidence for?_

I struck the wall of the shower with my fist. It hurt, but this time the stupid anime-character idea did what it was supposed to and anchored me to reality. There was something missing from my mind, something important that I had perhaps based some monumental action on. I needed to find it. It was a mystery within my own mind! I couldn't leave it unsolved.

"_You just want to un-riddle him or something!"_

That had been Ryan, right? He had accused me of that right after he joined the rebellion. Didn't he understand that I had done everything to save his little brother? But I hadn't, had I? Just a minute ago, I had been thinking how I had decided to go through with this thing because I wanted to know about his motivation.

I tried to make a mental list of everything I had just thought. "Kill," "noble death," "human nature," "motivation," and "evidence," had all produced that cacophony of thought that was plaguing me. "Kill" had made me sad, and "noble death" had made me both pleased and sad at the same time. "human nature" had been a piece of "evidence" in an attempt to find "motivation," and these were all centered on "Lelouch."

"Lelouch's" "motivation" for something had been "human nature," and I had discovered whatever "something" was by using "evidence."

Could "kill" or "noble death" be the something? I twisted my ring as I thought, even though normally I wouldn't even wear one, much less in the shower. How odd that I had one on now.

"Lelouch" was "motivated" to outwit "human nature" by "dying" a "noble death," and I had been searching for answers and had found them using "evidence?"

"Oh my…" I whispered as something inside my mind seemed to snap, opening the floodgates of my memories and washing away the fog with a tidal wave of thought.

Lelouch was going to die. I remembered everything now.

How had he done that? I crumpled to the bottom of the shower, weeping and gasping, clutching at my ring. How had he messed with my head like that? Why had he done it in the first place?

"_I don't want you to have to bear this alone when I'm gone."_

"That… that…!" I couldn't think of a word strong enough to describe how low my opinion of his intelligence had dropped. Hadn't I already told him that night when he had the gun that he could make me mad, but he couldn't make me hate him? Didn't he believe me?

But I had to admit, whatever the heck it was, it _had_ worked for a little while at least. I swore loudly, finished showering in record time and dressed hurriedly in a plain dress of black material. I threw on the cloak that went with my white imperial regalia and pulled up the hood. It was still raining outside, but going through the garden was a lot faster than navigating the corridors and staircases to get to the connecting tunnels or the areal hallways. I ran across the wet ground as quickly as I could, not even trying to think of what to say when I reached my destination.

All I knew was that Lelouch had tried, in the end, to protect me by once again isolating himself, and I had to stop him from thinking he was alone. I had to tell him that it hadn't worked. My love for him wasn't just a feeling; it was a driving force of nature that bound me to him more strongly than if we had been married for half a century. It couldn't be broken by something as flimsy as whatever that power was.

What _was_ that power, come to think of it?

Just as that thought ran through my mind, I caught sight of a tall figure between the trees and slowed to a walk. It wasn't until I was within ten meters of him that I recognized Orange Boy.

Orange Boy, who always seemed to be "in the know…"

I got a rather daring idea, and before I had time to talk myself out if it, I walked up to Jeremiah Gotwald and pushed my hood back just far enough that my face was visible.

"Lelouch said I should talk to you," I lied by way of greeting. He looked up from something he was doing with his phone and immediately dropped to one knee.

"Your highness," he addressed me, "of course, the Emperor's wish is my command." I ignored his lapdog comment as I tried to form the next thing I was going to say in my mind.

"He did something to me," I explained, deciding that a partial truth would do just as well as any falsehood. "I don't know what, but my head's been all fuzzy for a while and something feels very wrong. He said you'd explain when I asked him about it. What was he talking about?"

"He must have used his Geass on you," Orange Boy replied immediately. That was easier than I thought. His loyalty really was something else. "Geass is the absolute ability to bend anyone to his will; it's how he ascended the throne, actually. I myself have a Geass that cancels other Geass." I nodded thoughtfully.

"I think he means you to cancel the one he used on me," I added on a whim. If there was anything else in my head that wasn't mine, I wanted it gone. "He said, 'have Orange fix it, okay?'" Jeremiah looked up at me, and I could see his brain catching up to mine as he put two and two together.

"No dice, huh?" I answered myself. "Well, it was worth a try. Thanks for the info!" With that, I bolted for the front palace.

As I reached the building, I slowed down to a walk again, which was a mistake. My stamina was set up so that I could run flat out, but as soon as my heart rate dropped far enough, I found myself almost dead of fatigue. I panted, clutching at my throat as I alternately limped and jogged up two flights of stairs and down the hallway. I didn't have the patience to stand in an elevator.

I had pulled my hood off when I entered the building and was no longer in the rain, but feeling a bit self conscious as I stood breathlessly outside the correct door, I pulled it back up again, and arranged it so that my face was partially shaded. The garment was so heavily embroidered and bejeweled that I had no fear of being stopped by anyone; I was the future Empress, there was no doubt about that.

I took a moment to compose myself, and then gently opened the door. Lelouch was at his desk, deep in conversation with some people in business suits who looked like they were collectively having a very bad day. He didn't notice me until I closed the door behind myself with a heavy click of the latch, and immediately, what I had once called his evil-aura multiplied tenfold. The people he was talking to looked at me as well, and I was glad the cloak covered so much of me. I hadn't mastered the use of the mask like Lelouch had, and the jeweled brocade made a nice substitute. I was bowed to by the business people, who then scrambled out of the room as quickly as they could when their Emperor waved them away with a flick of his fingers.

"Why have you interrupted my conference?" he demanded coldly. I looked into his eyes, reveling in the fact that I could see his face, but he could not see mine. His expression and tone were those everyone took to be malice, but I knew better. They were a carefully controlled manifestation of deep agony. He was hurting. He started to speak again, but I held up a hand to silence him.

"I'm trying to think of the right word," I explained, "hang on a minute 'till I get it, will you?" With a sound between a sigh and a snort of annoyance, he stood up and strode to the window behind his desk, his back to me as he looked out.

The word I wanted meant "stupid," but it was stronger, like a Britannian version of _obakamono._* It wasn't lead-for-brains, though I liked that one too. How could he think that trick would work on me? Didn't he know how tenacious I was? Didn't he understand how I loved people? That my feelings were grounded in solid fact? They could not be controlled unless one controlled all the data! Wow, I sounded like a robot…

He was tense; I could see it from all the way across the room. The tendons in his neck were taught, and his shoulders hunched just a little forward, his fists clenched at his sides. Who did he think he was fooling?

The whole world and me, that's who.

Whatever his reasons for thinking so—and I had to admit, that Geass thing was pretty potent, so maybe he wasn't completely off-base—he really did believe that I now "despised and reviled him." In light of that, what did he think I was here to do? Kill him? Mentally torture him? I shuddered. He was silent and had his back to me, giving me the opportunity to do either if I wished. I shed my cloak and padded across the soft carpet as silently as I could. He knew I was there though; I could see the stiffening of his jaw line as I came up behind him.

I could feel the tightness in every part of him when I put my arms around him.

He started a bit, and I could feel his pulse racing through his neck because my face was pressed into his shoulder. He didn't speak, but he looked down at my hands on his chest and stomach, and I felt him touch my ring. I was glad that I hadn't taken it off; my wearing it was coincidence really, and I hadn't meant anything deep.

"About Jeremiah," I murmured into his ear, "you know he's pretty gullible?"

"What?" he exclaimed, voice cracking, as he whirled to look down at me, eyes searching my face as though he had lost something very important there.

"It didn't work," I informed him, not being able to come up with a more tactful way of putting it. "Your Geass; was that the first time it ever failed?"

"Failed?" he gasped. I nodded.

"You tried to mess with something you didn't understand," I explained. "It wasn't my heart you had to worry about, because my heart follows wherever my mind leads. It was my head you needed to mess with."

"But I—"

"You told me to base my feelings off of certain facts," I interrupted, "so I commend you for figuring that much out. However, you never actually told me to _believe_ them."

I could see comprehension awakening on his face, and I smiled mischievously.

"Of course," I added, "even if you had, I'll bet that in a contest between your Geass and my less-than-sane tenacity, I'd still win. I've decided to love you," my voice grew quieter, even though there was probably no one to overhear us. "You can't change that, even with Geass. And I'm not sorry."

If he had literally taken off a façade made of paper and glitter, it could not have been a more drastic change. Just because I could see through his act didn't mean that the difference was lost on me. He seemed unsure of whether he should look disappointed or joyful, and I smiled again as I put a hand on his face and whispered, "That's more like it. What're you hiding from _me_ for?"

"I didn't want you to be hurt when I'm gone," he explained softly. "I was trying to keep you safe, from those who would harm you if they found out about us, and also from your own heartbreak."

"Even if we had grown old together," I reminded him, "one of us would have died eventually. I've known since day one that I didn't get to keep you forever; not if the future is going to keep on moving forward, anyway."

"I suppose you have a point there," he allowed, pulling me into his arms.

That night, he finished telling me the parts of his Zero story that had to be left out before since I didn't know about Geass. There wasn't too much to reveal, actually, since he had come up with a lot of creative half-truths to explain away people's obedience before.

"That's got to go to your head," I muttered when he seemed to have finished. "It's an odd twist of fate that you of all people would gain that power; you who already had such grandiose plans."

"What do you suppose you'd do if you could use it then?" he countered. I chuckled.

"I'd use it on you, first off," I announced. I was sitting up on my side of the bed, and he was laying on his, but at these words he pulled himself up to look me in the face.

"What would you demand of me, then?" he inquired. I smirked mischievously.

"Koneko Monozuki commands you," I declared dramatically, "from this day forward, you will cease with the drama-queen-waving-of-your-hand-when-you-make-a-speech!"

"The what?" he queried.

"You know," I explained, "the way you always wave your hand around for dramatic emphasis. You're such a ham. I bet ten years from now they'll have 'Lelouch' in the dictionary as a synonym for 'prima donna.'" He looked startled. "Good grief, didn't you even notice that you do that?"

He shook his head mutely, and I smirked again.

"Then I'd have you set that dorky hat of yours on fire. I don't care how traditional it is, it's still a fashion nightmare."

"So in essence," he summarized with an eyebrow crooked in mock irritation, "you'd want me to drop all the things that make me Emperor. It doesn't work like that though, you know. You only get to use the power once on any person."

"Then I'd have to choose carefully what I'd ask for, huh?" I mused, flopping back down on my pillow. He looked down on me with the little fond half-smile I only rarely saw on his unguarded face.

"Lelouch," I started, and then stopped.

"What is it?" he prompted. "Do you actually have a wish?" I nodded.

"You love this world, right?" I checked in a small voice.

"I do," he replied strongly. I lifted up a hand and laid my palm across his cheek. He leaned over me to hear as I whispered my request.

"For tonight," I breathed into his ear, "do you think you could put them aside? Only until the sun rises."

"Why?" he asked, a little taken aback.

"Because the 'Geass' I would ask of you is that for tonight you could love only me and no one else."

He smiled, and I felt rather than saw it, for his lips were already pressed against mine.

"That, I think," he mumbled, "you won't need Geass for."

The next morning, I woke up to the depressing of the mattress on either side of me, as though Lelouch was leaning over me for some reason, supporting himself on the bed. This was not unusual; Lelouch always got up before I did. It was like he had an alarm clock in his brain or something, though what he did to fill the time between waking up and finally coming down for breakfast was still a mystery to me.

When I felt him press his lips to my forehead, I froze. The mattress sprang back up, and a moment later, I heard the door shut.

So, it was today then.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, I contemplated as I showered and sat as still as I could manage while the maids—who were back on active duty all of a sudden—did my makeup. Today was the "March of the Condemned," the day when there would be a victory parade before the public execution of the former rebel leaders. It was only natural that Lelouch would pick this day. He wasn't actually planning on killing them. The public execution would be his own.

I was decked out in royal regalia, but made to wear manacles on my neck and wrists. It made sense for him to publicly alienate and subdue me; he had to show the people that even I wasn't on his side, here at the end.

As soon as I was dressed, some masked guards came and led me to the royal float where it stood waiting in the courtyard and had me kneel beside the throne on the top level. From there I had a good view of Tien Zi and the others as they were put up on those scaffold-things on the prisoner transports. Schniezel was tied up in front of the float, and just behind him, below the ramp where the royal emblem was displayed, I saw Nunnaly with her useless feet chained to the deck. She looked more depressed than anything else, with an expression of blank hopelessness that was mirrored on many of the other prisoners' faces as well.

A fanfare of trumpets and drums announced Lelouch's arrival, and I didn't look at him as he climbed the stairs at the side and swept past me to take his seat. I snuck a peak at his hand though, and was glad to see that it was relaxed on the arm of the throne. This was the final phase of his plan, and the part of him that loved a challenge knew that all was going according to design. He could take joy in that, and perhaps that was what kept his fear of death at bay.

There was no applause, no throwing of petals or confetti as we drove slowly through the streets. The big televisions on the buildings were all playing the news, which covered the parade from the sky and the street. The newscaster's tightly controlled voice was the only sound besides the engines of the vehicles.

"Thank you," I heard Lelouch whisper. "I'm glad you're here, at the conclusion of all this."

I was going to look up at him, but a gasp went up from the watching crowd, and I turned to see what it was, though I had a funny feeling that I already knew.

A cloaked figure stood in the middle of the road, blocking our path. He wore a mask, and was reasonably tall, though not so much as others I knew.

Zero slid one foot back, leaned forward, and charged.

_Tsuzuku!_

*Japanese lesson time! _Obakamono_: a complete and utter fool; absolute moron.

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

It was Nunnaly who saved me from being a complete wreck. Her tears gave me someone to comfort, and I think if not what I do best, it's at least something I can focus single-mindedly on.

This is a tragedy, but…

It's tragedy at its finest.

Chapter 10)** Crimson; As Dust Returns to Dust.**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: unlike the rest of this story, this chapter is rated "T+," for **_**brief**_** graphic violence. If you've ever actually **_**seen**_** the end of the anime, you will not read anything in that category that you're not prepared for. **

**Thank you for your attention, and please enjoy!**

**Crimson; As Dust Returns to Dust**

Zero's cloak flew out behind him as he dashed forward, dodging the fire from the Sutherlands as they tried vainly to bring him down. Jeremiah, who had been in front of the float organizing everyone, started barking orders and then a blade slid from his sleeve and he took a swing at the attacker, who jumped right over his head and landed lightly for a moment on Nunnaly's level, before he sprang up the ramp towards where Lelouch and I were.

Lelouch stood and pulled out a gun to defend himself, and I felt fairly safe looking at him, seeing as there was an internationally famous—and famously _dead_—terrorist about to clobber him. In one fluid motion, Zero drew a sword from a belt that I was certain hadn't been a part of the original costume, and struck the gun to the street before pointing the blade at Lelouch.

It was wickedly sharp, tapering so gradually that the point was like a needle at its apex, and the man holding it knew how to wield it. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Suzaku was behind the mask. I could only hope that the people's wholehearted desire for a savior would blind them to the truth, though perhaps I only noticed it because I already knew.

I could see a bit of Lelouch's face, and his final mask had come off, leaving his eyes, always so tormented, calm and clear like a glassy lake on a windless summer day. I couldn't close my eyes, though I saw out of my peripheral vision that Kallen and the little Chinese Empress and the Japanese girl were all doing so.

I was hyperaware of every movement they both made, as Lelouch seemed to relax all of his muscles, and Suzaku tensed his.

Then, with a horrible sound of severed flesh and splattering blood, Zero, Knight for Justice, Hero of the Oppressed, drove the blade deep into Lelouch's chest.

I heard Lelouch gasp quietly in pain, and saw the shocked expression on his face, as though he had forgotten that dying would hurt. He slumped forward onto Suzaku's trembling shoulder, and whispered some words to him, placing a hand on the opposite side of the mask and managing to smear it with bloody fingerprints.

"The punishment for what you have done will be this, then," he had said, "that you will live on as Zero, sacrificing the ordinary pleasures of living for the sake of the world." I didn't hear that until later when Zero finally told me about it, but his response was audible from where I was half kneeling, half struggling to rise though I knew the chains were too short to let me do so, and it wouldn't do any good even if they did.

"This 'Geass,'" he choked out, "I humbly accept!" Then with a sound of metal sliding against a wet surface, he withdrew the sword, and Lelouch tottered forward until he stumbled and fell down the ramp. I didn't try to catch him. I knew he was trying to reach Nunnaly, and no matter how deeply we felt about each other, he had loved her for so much longer, and deserved a chance to say goodbye.

Zero flicked the blood from the blade so that it made a red crescent on the blue carpet. I heard someone shout, "Lelouch the traitor is dead! Free his prisoners!" It occurred to me that I probably fell into that category, and started looking around for the keys to my shackles until Zero raised his sword.

It was only after he cut through the chains—for which you can imagine I sat _very_ still indeed—that I took a closer look at them and noticed that he had slashed down the seams in the metal. Good grief, I thought, they may as well have had labels on them saying "cut here." The boys, as I thought of them still, must have planned this one at the last minute, or perhaps someone else would've sat here if I hadn't.

Casting aside the broken bonds, I made my way down the ramp, trying hard not to step in the trail of blood, to where Nunnaly was clutching her brother's scarlet hand and wailing in a grief and agony of loss that was slowly being drowned out by the cheers and celebration of the people who had hitherto lined the streets in stony silence.

I wordlessly put my fingers to Lelouch's face and closed his eyes, which were still half open. Then I pulled Nunnaly, who I had never even met, into my arms and held her while she sobbed. I wasn't just doing it to be nice. I had known this about myself for some time; that if I was in a desperately bad situation along with someone else, I would be able to keep it together so much better if I focused on supporting the other person. She wept into my shoulder, and I stroked her hair, infinitely grateful for someone to comfort. It kept _me_ from being the one screaming in pain.

The first thing I could think of besides Nunnaly's grief and Lelouch being gone was that we really needed to make sure his body was cremated as soon as possible, so that the local rebels couldn't stick his head on a pike or anything horrible like that. When a Japanese man in a straitjacket and a Britannian woman with long platinum blonde hair came over to see if we needed anything, I nodded, hoping Nunnaly wouldn't be traumatized by discussion of her brother's corpse.

Frankly, "my husband's corpse," wasn't making me very happy either.

"We should remove his body to somewhere that's not so public," I suggested, "to prevent any, ah, immature actions that might spoil the celebrations." The Britannian woman wrinkled her nose and nodded, and the Japanese man called a few of his friends over, and they laid Lelouch out inside a truck that had been a part of the procession.

Orange was defending himself from some overconfident freed convicts when I yanked him over and told him to retreat in the truck along with his men. Only a handful of them actually ran for it. The rest, without an Emperor to serve (since as Lelouch had confessed to me the previous night, they were all just Geassed into being his slaves) threw off their masks and joined the celebrations.

It was as I watched the truck vanish around a street corner that it really hit me, more so than when the sword had pierced him, more so than when I had closed his eyes, that Lelouch was really dead. It was no longer a distant future event, nor an imminent doom, but a fact.

I didn't cry. Dreading the event had been more terrible than it actually happening, I found, or maybe it was just because I was keeping it together for Nunnaly. I was sad, yes, so sad that I wanted to wail along with her as she sat beside me on the bench where I had carried her to get her away from all the blood.

I surveyed the festive dancing and throwing off of prison clothes occurring in the streets around me, and that was when the second realization hit me.

This was what was happening all around the world.

Britannians, Japanese, and even a few Chinese nationals (Xingke and the little Empress sitting on his shoulders most prominently) were mingling and hugging one another. They were working together to get the locks on the mass transports open and undo the bonds on the other prisoners, regardless of race, age, gender or any other difference.

In other words, the plan had been a stunning success.

'Well done, Lelouch,' I thought. 'You've given this story a happy ending after all.'

That was when the tears started flowing down my cheeks as well. They were tears of joy, of triumph and pride. His last plan, his "Zero Requiem," hadn't just conquered the world. It had conquered prejudice and grudges, and stemmed the flow of hatred, as if he had taken the world's resentment and hatred and borne it with him into death.

'I knew there was a good reason I loved you,' I thought, wiping my eyes.

Nunnaly stopped crying presently, and introduced herself with many hiccoughs and sniffs. I referred to myself as, "your brother's fiancé, Koneko," and we shook hands and laughed a little because we had been crying all over each other like old friends without ever meeting. Somehow that was funny in the moment when nothing could possibly be anything but miserable, and we giggled long and loud like we had lost our minds.

Nunnaly was next in line to the throne, seeing as she was the only non-disinherited royal left besides Schniezel, who was all about "serving master Zero," thanks to the Geass used on him. Therefore, once the freed prisoners and rebels and bystanders all figured out she was there, she was hoisted up on shoulders and paraded through the streets as if she herself had struck the oppressor down. It was a well-known fact that she was by far one of kindest people who could possibly take the throne, and everyone was excited to have a better ruler in place.

I was also carried, which I thought was pretty weird, and even weirder was the fact that Zero, who had actually done all the work, was walking on his own legs. He was heading the procession though as we marched through the city and after a while I figured out that Nunnaly and I weren't carrying long pointy swords. Naturally people would feel happier about having us on their shoulders than someone who might accidentally cut them.

In the absence of confetti, those who had seen what had happened on television threw ordinary paper out of their windows so that we were traveling under a snowstorm of it. I hoped nobody had thrown out important manuscripts by mistake.

When we reached the palace, I had them let me down so I could join Zero at the front of the procession and show everyone how to get to the elevator. Zero input the new password and told me later that it had been "Rollo Lamperouge," which was even more secret than putting Lamperouge after Nunnaly's name.

The dungeon hadn't been emptied for the parade by any stretch of the imagination, and when Zero showed where a hidden staircase was to the upper levels, the stampede was somewhat frightening as those who had been shut up down there clawed their way up towards the sunlight.

After making sure that Zero knew the password (and informing him that I knew his true identity by addressing him as, "hey you, Arthur's chew-toy!") I excused myself and got a couple of rebel folks to help me get Nunnaly to the rear palace. I had them drop her off in my room so she could rest in relative solitude, and then ducked out again to see if I could conjure up her wheelchair. As I rather hoped, it had been discarded in the blue room where Nunnaly had been held captive for the past few weeks. Besides having a heavy-duty lock on the door and security cameras, it was really quite nice.

As I wheeled the chair back to where Nunnaly awaited me, I looked out of the windows at the clear blue sky, and thought about how the rain had all fallen yesterday. It had been yesterday that I had clung to Lelouch as if somehow by telling him his Geass wouldn't work, I had kept us from being truly separated.

Even though he was gone, I still felt that deep connection to him that I had felt only a few weeks ago when I had discovered his plans, and that had broken (for the first time, he said) his Geass. I knew I wouldn't live forever, and that eventually I would go to join him. I resolved until then that I would try to enjoy living in the world he had strived to bring to peace.

I still wept for him that day; after getting Nunnaly settled into her chair and giving her a drink of water, I couldn't deny my own grief any longer, and as if she was somehow feeding off of me, she started crying all over again too.

By that evening, however, when I changed into my old "little black dress" and wheeled Nunnaly out to face the festival that was going on in the courtyard, we had both composed ourselves. We had talked for most of the day, with me telling her all about Lelouch's plan and how well it had worked, since she had already figured out a lot of it. She had known how much he really cared about her and everyone else when she touched his hand, and the blanks weren't hard to fill from there.

We had agreed that we would go along with the official story, so when we were mobbed by cameramen at the front door, I stole the spotlight and told them the rubbish about selling myself to protect my friend.

One of my maids had found Nunnaly a nicer dress than the prison uniform, though the other (the one with the black bun) was a Geassed Black Knight who had gone to find her superior officer as soon as the Emperor she had been forced to serve no longer existed. We two had done Nunnaly's hair, so she looked the perfect picture of crown princess as we were cheered by all of the people.

I caught sight of Ryan talking to Xingke, who didn't seem to be listening as he offered some drink to the Empress, who looked a little overwhelmed with all the noise and unexpected events. He didn't look at me, and I didn't try to talk to him.

The media people were making their report, and they kept calling me the "Former Future Empress," until Nunnaly finally asked them to refer to me as "Queen," since that was a rank down from Empress, an a great deal shorter as well as less convoluted. So it was that I became a "Queen," a name that was to stick for a long time, perhaps even for many years to come.

That night, Nunnaly suggested that we take a trip to the water mausoleum where people lit candles for the dead. It wouldn't be improper, she explained, for her to at least do that much, since she was his sister. It would be seen as ordinary tradition and nothing more. I didn't much like the idea. My husband the drama Queen couldn't possibly be satisfied with a puny little candle flame.

It was Zero who came up with the idea of setting off fireworks. It was a brilliant plan, I had to admit, because anyone watching would assume we were celebrating, not mourning. The three of us mounted to the roof of the front palace—now rechristened the government bureau—with our arms full of things that explode.

We had only lit off a few of them when Kallen showed up with some important report for Zero, and though none of us explained what we were doing, she somehow ended up setting them off with us, apparently in a similar state of mind as the rest of us.

Milly the news reporter and Rivalz (the guy who had shouted the name Lamperouge on TV) wandered up next. They said they had been chatting sort of aimlessly and seen the show. A little after their arrival, that scientist, Nina showed up, with Arthur the cat trotting along at her heels.

The night sky came alive as colored flowers blossomed across it and stars exploded in a shower of sparks. Milly told me later that a certain someone had once promised to shoot off fireworks with everyone again, though he and another girl, Shirley, were now dead.

"In a way," she said, "this is a tribute to that promise, and to those who made it, even though they're no longer with us."

A few days later when the excitement had died down a bit, I took a road trip to my old apartment on a whim to see if they had kept any of my stuff, and to my surprise found that Lelouch had been paying for it to be kept as it was. Not only that, but it was still clean from when Suzaku and I had been here last. That was pretty cool, but my job was a thing of the past. It was an unfortunate side-effect of missing three shifts in a row, not answering my phone and then showing up on television as the Emperor's fiancé, thus apparently no longer needing a job.

I had still been staying in my room at the palace, but when I was preparing to move back into my old place, Nunnaly asked if I would mind taking up a position a royal aide and representative and moving back to the homeland with her now that a new imperial city—called Excalibur—was under construction and the monarchy had to be pulled out of the waste bin and bent back into a functional shape.

So it was that I said farewell to Japan, certain that I'd be back there often for UFN Summits, at which I was authorized to represent Nunnaly and Britannia whenever it was more inconvenient her to attend herself.

Suzaku joined us that day in an imperial guard's uniform with a visor over his face, which was what he wore whenever he didn't want to be known as Zero. Nunnaly knew it was him from the moment he jumped on her level of the royal float, and I had known from the beginning, so he didn't try to hide anything from us.

Jeremiah walked off the face of existence one day, and a few weeks later we got a postcard from him and some girl named Anya Alstream, saying that the two of them had gone into hiding in Holland, and after staying at C.C's place for a while, they had bought—what else?—and orange farm!

This world had been shattered and melted down into something unrecognizable by war and poverty and hatred. Then it had been enslaved over and over again to different forces. My father used to joke about the villains in the old superhero cartoons, wondering why they wanted to take over the world when it was so screwed up.

Lelouch had seen this. He had known how little effort it would actually take to topple the whole thing and destroy it.

He had done so.

Then he had created it anew, and given it everything he could, even his own life.

He had given it a future.

'A most magnificent tragedy,' I often thought, 'because at its heart, it had a happy ending. Right, Lelouch?'

_Tsuzuku!_

**Next time in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

This story had to be written; it practically wrote itself for crying out loud! I know it is still a secret and can never be read, but still…

**Epilogue; Disclaimer!**


	12. Chapter 12

**Epilogue; Disclaimer!**

I sat at the kitchen table of my new house in Excalibur, admiring the small stack of glossy bound volumes on my placemat. I had only made ten copies, but in truth, this was still a story no one could ever read; not if my husband's plan was to succeed. Still, I am a writer from the crown of my head to the polish on my toenails, and when a story like this was lying around, I couldn't help but make it into a book.

There was another reason though.

It is true that this is a "story that can never be told," but even as my fingers had started, unbidden, to type out the first line a month ago, I confess to having had a target audience in mind anyway. Who is it, you may ask?

It's the one who's making me throw up at five in the morning and crave lemonade and rare steaks. I wrote this for myself, because I'm an author, but I am also writing it as a letter to my unborn child.

I don't even know if you're male or female yet, or what sort of person you'll be, but I've already decided not to keep the truth from you past the time when you're old enough to understand it.

Of course, it's still a secret for now, because if it's discovered that you're Lelouch's child, I'm sure you'll be killed or imprisoned. The only bigotry that he didn't manage to kill off was the kind directed at people like himself and Jeremiah (whose orange farm is flourishing, by the way.) Luckily for us, in this time-period, people don't ask who fathered one's child anymore.

I'm afraid that by the time you're old enough for me to tell you all of this, my memories will have faded, and the details will start to fall through the cracks in my mind. I want you to know what sort of person your father was, so that you will never be ashamed of him. He was the most brilliant man on earth, and though he did a good job of hiding it, he cared about people, even those halfway around the world that he had never met, enough to sacrifice his own happiness, his desires and his life for them.

He loved them enough to let them hate and kill him.

I'm sure that goes for you too, since he once told me he was fighting for the sake of the future, and you as a new life embody that more fully than anything else I can think of. I want you to know this about him, and to believe what I have written in these pages as the absolute truth. I want you to be proud to be descended from the man who destroyed and rebuilt the world.

I have already decided that your last name will be "Lamperouge." I can't name you "Britannia," after him properly, but if he felt that his other surname was secret enough to use as a password, I think I feel relatively safe in using it.

I don't know why I think this, but I can't help but wonder if some otaku mightn't come along and make this into an anime or posting this thing online, so if that ever happens, by way of conclusion this is all I have to say:

(To anyone who's **not** my kid!)

_**All resemblances to real persons, places, organizations, events and patented objects are purely coincidental! This story is a work of fiction, and should not be taken seriously! In addition, if you recognize it, chances are, I don't own it! Thank you!**_

**A/N: A big thank-you to my friend FMA Human Starter Kit-san, for proofreading and advice! A big thank-you as well to anyone who actually likes my story and has read it to the end!**

**Someday in **_**Of Curiosity and Cats:**_

**The sequel! Code Geass; Legacy**

Chapter 1)** My Daddy Talks to Me**

**Coming… ever?**


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